2. Sonic Advance 2 GBA
3. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Wii U
4. Advance Wars: Dark Conflict DS
5. Joy Mech Fight Famicom
6. Grandia PS1
7. Money Idol Exchanger Game Boy
8. The Battle of Olympus NES
9. Lost Kingdoms 2 GC
10. Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon DS
11. Code of Princess 3DS DL
12. Discworld Saturn
13. Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru [For the Frog the Bell Tolls] Game Boy
14. 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 3DS DL
15. 3D Streets of Rage 3DS DL
16. Pokémon Shuffle 3DS DL *NEW*
17. 3D Altered Beast 3DS DL *NEW*
Pokémon Shuffle
Pokémon Shuffle is a free to play downloadable puzzle game for 3DS.
It takes a lot of inspiration from the likes of Candy Crush, but in my opinion, it's mechanics feel a bit fairer - you can swap two icons anywhere on the map instead of just two next to each other, which makes creating combos and beating stages feel a bit less luck-based - not entirely mind, but it's still an improvement.
Shuffle makes use of the pokémon mechanics reasonably well - your puzzle pieces are made up of 4 pokémon you bring into the stage. Each pokemon can activate a special ability when matched (like doing more damage if you match 4 for example) and their type plays an important role. Each stage requires you to defeat an opposing pokémon by whittling down their health bar by making matches and the pokémon type chart is full effect - you'll be bringing in 4 super-effective pokémon wherever possible for double damage.
You also have mega evolutions at your disposal - matching enough of a mega evolving pokemon make it mega evolve, causing it to do a lot of damage and also take out swathes of your puzzle pieces, often causing combos as it does so when new tiles fall in to take their place.
The enemy pokémon will try and screw you over though - they'll turn some of your pokémon into different pokémon, normally ones they are resistant to, or they'll block off certain tiles. Near the end of the game, they get pretty nasty about how much they interfere too. When you beat a pokémon you get a chance to catch it. The % chance is based on how many turns it took you to beat it, plus their base rate. Some can have incredibly low base rates of 1 or 2%, so beating them fast is your only real chance of catching them.
Pokémon Shuffle is a rather fun game that I think is worth a buy. So....let's talk about the elephant in the room shall we? Nintendo has ventured into the Free To Play market before, with Rusty's Real Deal Baseball, Steel Diver Sub Wars and even the very recent Ironfall Invasion. They were more traditional in their model- Steel Diver and Ironfall are basically extended demos you can buy the rest of the content for, and Rusty's Real Deal Baseball is a bunch of mini games you can permanently buy, with an interesting meta-game around bargaining the price down that is novel and interesting. Pokémon Shuffle is one of the most egregious examples of free-to-play, and it takes it's model right from the mobile puzzle game market.
Jewels in game can be traded for either hearts or coins. You can earn coins from checking in each day or a few by beating stages and they are used for either buying power ups for levels (instant mega-evolve, 5 extra turns, etc) or buying great balls, which double the catch rate of the pokémon you're trying to catch, once. Hearts are used to actually play a level, and regenerate every 30 minutes, up to a maximum of 5.
The issue I have is that the rates for the jewels are pretty high in real money, and guarantee nothing - 12 jewels (about £10) gets you 48000 coins, which disappears quick when you buy 2500 coin great balls, or 9000 coin powerups, and neither of those things is even guaranteed to work. It's essentially gambling your real money away. Hearts are a waste aswell - you can get 80 for the same price as 48000 coins, but they'll disappear fast, and the stages won't be any easier to make up for it.
And let me say, those stages near the end are really mean. Some of the latter stages are going to requires hundreds of attempts and a lot of blind luck to get past unless you buy a lot of those power ups. And the in-game methods of getting coins suck - 500 a day for checking in, and about 30 for clearing a stage.
The game even has an absolutely horrendous false economy. The 5 extra turns item you can buy at the start of the stage costs 800 coins. If you get to the end of a stage without winning, it offers you the ability to pay for 5 extra turns - the cost? 1 jewel. Jewels are not only limited in game (there are only 11 available) - they also are worth 1200 coins when you trade them. It's essentially taking advantage of your frustration and making you waste MORE money if you do it then. The 11 jewels thing is notable too. Jewels give better rates as you trade more in. The highest rates give much more bang for your buck - and that trade cost? 12. 12 jewels.
Pokémon Shuffle is a great game. I would have loved to pay for it. But I don't want to pay for the ability to play it temporarily, or the ability to gamble my money away. If this had been available outright for £10, I would have bought it outright. At £10 for a few plays or some coins, they can sod off. It definitely seems like a warm up for the mobile market, but this F2P system can damn well stay there if Nintendo is going to invest in mobile - leave console gaming payments as they are.
Pokémon Shuffle is definitely worth a play. But for the love of god, don't justify the payments system by spending money on it.
It takes a lot of inspiration from the likes of Candy Crush, but in my opinion, it's mechanics feel a bit fairer - you can swap two icons anywhere on the map instead of just two next to each other, which makes creating combos and beating stages feel a bit less luck-based - not entirely mind, but it's still an improvement.
Shuffle makes use of the pokémon mechanics reasonably well - your puzzle pieces are made up of 4 pokémon you bring into the stage. Each pokemon can activate a special ability when matched (like doing more damage if you match 4 for example) and their type plays an important role. Each stage requires you to defeat an opposing pokémon by whittling down their health bar by making matches and the pokémon type chart is full effect - you'll be bringing in 4 super-effective pokémon wherever possible for double damage.
You also have mega evolutions at your disposal - matching enough of a mega evolving pokemon make it mega evolve, causing it to do a lot of damage and also take out swathes of your puzzle pieces, often causing combos as it does so when new tiles fall in to take their place.
The enemy pokémon will try and screw you over though - they'll turn some of your pokémon into different pokémon, normally ones they are resistant to, or they'll block off certain tiles. Near the end of the game, they get pretty nasty about how much they interfere too. When you beat a pokémon you get a chance to catch it. The % chance is based on how many turns it took you to beat it, plus their base rate. Some can have incredibly low base rates of 1 or 2%, so beating them fast is your only real chance of catching them.
Pokémon Shuffle is a rather fun game that I think is worth a buy. So....let's talk about the elephant in the room shall we? Nintendo has ventured into the Free To Play market before, with Rusty's Real Deal Baseball, Steel Diver Sub Wars and even the very recent Ironfall Invasion. They were more traditional in their model- Steel Diver and Ironfall are basically extended demos you can buy the rest of the content for, and Rusty's Real Deal Baseball is a bunch of mini games you can permanently buy, with an interesting meta-game around bargaining the price down that is novel and interesting. Pokémon Shuffle is one of the most egregious examples of free-to-play, and it takes it's model right from the mobile puzzle game market.
Jewels in game can be traded for either hearts or coins. You can earn coins from checking in each day or a few by beating stages and they are used for either buying power ups for levels (instant mega-evolve, 5 extra turns, etc) or buying great balls, which double the catch rate of the pokémon you're trying to catch, once. Hearts are used to actually play a level, and regenerate every 30 minutes, up to a maximum of 5.
The issue I have is that the rates for the jewels are pretty high in real money, and guarantee nothing - 12 jewels (about £10) gets you 48000 coins, which disappears quick when you buy 2500 coin great balls, or 9000 coin powerups, and neither of those things is even guaranteed to work. It's essentially gambling your real money away. Hearts are a waste aswell - you can get 80 for the same price as 48000 coins, but they'll disappear fast, and the stages won't be any easier to make up for it.
And let me say, those stages near the end are really mean. Some of the latter stages are going to requires hundreds of attempts and a lot of blind luck to get past unless you buy a lot of those power ups. And the in-game methods of getting coins suck - 500 a day for checking in, and about 30 for clearing a stage.
The game even has an absolutely horrendous false economy. The 5 extra turns item you can buy at the start of the stage costs 800 coins. If you get to the end of a stage without winning, it offers you the ability to pay for 5 extra turns - the cost? 1 jewel. Jewels are not only limited in game (there are only 11 available) - they also are worth 1200 coins when you trade them. It's essentially taking advantage of your frustration and making you waste MORE money if you do it then. The 11 jewels thing is notable too. Jewels give better rates as you trade more in. The highest rates give much more bang for your buck - and that trade cost? 12. 12 jewels.
Pokémon Shuffle is a great game. I would have loved to pay for it. But I don't want to pay for the ability to play it temporarily, or the ability to gamble my money away. If this had been available outright for £10, I would have bought it outright. At £10 for a few plays or some coins, they can sod off. It definitely seems like a warm up for the mobile market, but this F2P system can damn well stay there if Nintendo is going to invest in mobile - leave console gaming payments as they are.
Pokémon Shuffle is definitely worth a play. But for the love of god, don't justify the payments system by spending money on it.
3D Altered Beast
3D Altered Beast is the 3rd game of the Sega 3D Classics line I've played.
3D Sonic the Hedgehog was possibly the best way to play that game. 3D Streets of Rage is probably the best way to play that game. 3D Hang-On, 3D Space Harrier, 3D Galaxy Force 2 - probably the best way to play those games outside of the arcade. Play all of those games, they are fantastic. I didn't even like Hang-On and Space Harrier, and the 3D versions have swayed me - I actually really enjoy them here.
3D Altered Beast isn't quite so definitive. For a start, this is a reworking of the Mega-Drive game. Why? There's literally nothing to recommend it over the Arcade version. Secondly, and I think this is important - although this is possibly the best way to play Altered Beast, it is, very notably, still a shit game.
Altered Beast is a terrible, terrible beat-em up. There's not much you can do to save it from the title. They've added a 'random form' mode, which is nice, but the issue is that most of the bosses are really designed around the form use on their level anyway - taking on the stage 2 boss with anything other than dragon is nigh on impossible without losing lives (for the record, I did this mode on my run and got Wolf, Wolf, Dragon, Bear, Bear on the 5 levels). It also accentuates how unbalanced they are. Tiger, the last form, is without a doubt the worst. Dragon is totally broken. The other two are OK. The gameplay is still no less boring, the variety lacking and there's no reason to really play it still.
The 3D effect here is also the worst in the 3D Classics series - not through a lack of effort mind, but because Altered Beast is a flat,boring game visually. Flat backgrounds, no parallax - it's just not a good game to remake in 3D. It's not a notable feature for this game, and it's already a crap game to begin with.
There are exactly 3 positive things I have to say about Altered Beast.
1. This is hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOQcnliEjXM
2. So is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_9VsnQJLjA
3. Literally every pose the Bear-Man makes is also hilarious:
May favourite is the 3rd one. He's like 'I don't give a damn, I'm a motherfuckin' bear!'
Only pick up 3D Altered Beast is only worth it if you want to get the entire set of 3D Classics. Otherwise, avoid. It's not worth it to own a(nother) copy of Altered Beast.
3D Sonic the Hedgehog was possibly the best way to play that game. 3D Streets of Rage is probably the best way to play that game. 3D Hang-On, 3D Space Harrier, 3D Galaxy Force 2 - probably the best way to play those games outside of the arcade. Play all of those games, they are fantastic. I didn't even like Hang-On and Space Harrier, and the 3D versions have swayed me - I actually really enjoy them here.
3D Altered Beast isn't quite so definitive. For a start, this is a reworking of the Mega-Drive game. Why? There's literally nothing to recommend it over the Arcade version. Secondly, and I think this is important - although this is possibly the best way to play Altered Beast, it is, very notably, still a shit game.
Altered Beast is a terrible, terrible beat-em up. There's not much you can do to save it from the title. They've added a 'random form' mode, which is nice, but the issue is that most of the bosses are really designed around the form use on their level anyway - taking on the stage 2 boss with anything other than dragon is nigh on impossible without losing lives (for the record, I did this mode on my run and got Wolf, Wolf, Dragon, Bear, Bear on the 5 levels). It also accentuates how unbalanced they are. Tiger, the last form, is without a doubt the worst. Dragon is totally broken. The other two are OK. The gameplay is still no less boring, the variety lacking and there's no reason to really play it still.
The 3D effect here is also the worst in the 3D Classics series - not through a lack of effort mind, but because Altered Beast is a flat,boring game visually. Flat backgrounds, no parallax - it's just not a good game to remake in 3D. It's not a notable feature for this game, and it's already a crap game to begin with.
There are exactly 3 positive things I have to say about Altered Beast.
1. This is hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOQcnliEjXM
2. So is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_9VsnQJLjA
3. Literally every pose the Bear-Man makes is also hilarious:
May favourite is the 3rd one. He's like 'I don't give a damn, I'm a motherfuckin' bear!'
Only pick up 3D Altered Beast is only worth it if you want to get the entire set of 3D Classics. Otherwise, avoid. It's not worth it to own a(nother) copy of Altered Beast.
Never Forget:
