3DS Nintendo E-Shop Game Review: Witch and Hero

One of my favorite things to do in the e-shop is looks for small indie games that cost less than a couple dollars. When I found Witch & Hero, I decided to make an impulse purchase and give it a go. 

Witch & Hero is about… well, a witch and a hero who go off and try to defeat the evil Medusa. Though they come close, the two fail, and before Medusa kicks them out of her castle, she turns the witch to stone. Your job is to level back up, max out your attack, speed and defend stats, and beat Medusa to break the curse on the witch. 

Levels play out like this: You play as the hero, bumping into enemies to damage them (you take a bit of damage yourself, but you don’t die. When you run out of HP on the hero, you spin out for a few seconds, making you unable to move or attack while you regain health. The only time you lose is if the witches HP is brought to zero by being hit by bad guys). The witch sits in the middle of the playing filed, completely frozen and unable to attack, so it’s your job as the hero to kill baddies before they get to the witch, simple as that.

When I find a cheap game that’s a decent game to play through, I feel like I’ve found a gem, and Witch & Hero is defiantly a gem worth buying. It’s simple, addicting, and gives you the satisfying feeling of grinding levels a fair amount and taking on nearly 100 baddies at once. It’s 3 bucks on the Nintendo e-shop, and I highly recommend that you check it out.

Giveaway time!

Do you want to win a free Gameboy Color, Gameboy/Gameboy Color game, and a Pikachu figure form the 1990’s?
OF COURSE YOU FLIPPIN’ DO.
We did it! We finally hit 1,000 views on systemshuffle.com! As a thank you to everyone for the constant support, I’m doing a giveaway!

On October 19th, 2013, I’ll be randomly drawing a winner who will receive these prizes: A turquoise Gameboy Color, A Pikachu figure from the 1990’s, and a mystery Gameboy/Gameboy Color game! 
Click here to learn how to enter!

 

Animal Crossing

There have been 4 different Animal Crossing titles released throughout the years, the most recent being Animal Crossing: New Leaf that was just released on June 9th, 2013 for the 3DS. Go back a bit further and you’ll find Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii, Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS, and the game that we’re reviewing today; Animal Crossing for Gamecube. The game was published and developed by Nintendo and released in 2001, around the same time as the Gamecube itself. In fact, did you know that Animal Crossing was originally released in Japan on the N64? By the time the game was translated to english, the Gamecube was released, and Nintendo decided to release Animal Crossing for Gamecube in America to show off the new game and system. The game also came with a new memory card with enough memory to make an Animal Crossing file for those who had the system but nothing to save their data on yet.

“So, what do I do in this game? How do I win?” Animal Crossing is an open-ended game, meaning that there’s really no way to beat it nor does it ever end. Think of it as a “second life outside your own” type of game, where the game runs on real time, making everyday a new day. Because the game is in real time, there are also holidays that give you special items or hold events and game for you to play. You move into town with no place to live, so the local general store owner (Tom Nook) offers to put you on a loan program and give you a house so you have someplace to live while paying it off as you play. “How do I pay off my loan?” Well, the currency in the game are called “bells”. You earn bells by selling furniture, fish, bugs, fossils, or doing favors for your animal neighbors. Your neighbors are all animals, while you’re the only human in the game. Favors include running house to house picking up items they may have borrowed from each other, or finding a certain bug or fish for the neighbor to enjoy. After you’ve collected enough bells to pay off your first loan (yes, first), you then have the option to increase the size of your house… for a cost. And so, the bells needed for each new size increase and get more and more expensive, but you can end up with a lot of space to make your own personalized home with hundreds of furniture to collect and choose from.

Let’s go a little more into neighbors. What kind of neighbors can you get? Are they all the same? Will I always have the same people in my town? You can have chickens, alligators, cows, dogs, cats, sheep, hawks, wolves, frogs, and other types of animals as your neighbors! Each neighbor has their own catchphrase, name, gender, and personality! There are the cranky, lazy, snooty, normal, and peppy types to meet and greet in Animal Crossing! Don’t like a certain neighbor? Don’t worry, if you visit a friends town or wait until some time has gone by, there’s a chance you can start the game and find a letter from said neighbor letting you know that they’ve moved away and won’t ever forget you. The sad part of this is that if there’s a neighbor you love, there’s a chance they can leave as well, and without any warning.

Here’s a little list of things you can do in game:

• Donate to the Museum! When you catch a bug, fish, find a fossil or a painting, bring it to Blathers, the owl who runs the museum! Bringing your creatures here won’t get you any bells, but all the museum asks for is one of each type of bug/fish/fossil/painting, so once they have it in their gallery you can sell duplicates from that point forward! I love donating, so when my friends come to my town, they can go through my gallery and see everything I’ve worked hard to collect.
• Design clothes! The Able Sisters run a little tailor in town that allows you to make your own patterns to use on your clothes, as wallpaper or flooring, wear as a hat or umbrella, and share with your town! Your friends and even neighbors can then use your pattern and wear it around for themselves!
• Look for campers! Time to time, there will be a stranger camping in your town in a tent (or igloo if it’s winter). You can then play games with these characters to get furniture or bells!
• Fish or catch bugs! Collect them for bells or donate them to the museum!
• Go shopping! Shop around Tom Nooks for furniture, paper, clothes, or tools!
• Write letters to your neighbors! The towns people LOVE letters, and will sometimes send you gifts if you write to them!
• Run errands for your neighbors to earn bells, paper, clothes, or furniture!

Overall, I grew up with this game. I adore every bit of it, and I have a lot of memories behind it as well, but if I had to choose between the classic Animal Crossing and the newer versions, I’d have to go with Animal Crossings newest release. Nintendo did a great job at listening to the fans about what they wanted added to the next Animal Crossing games, and in doing so they made every version of Animal Crossing an improvement of the last. If you compared the original Animal Crossing to its sequels, it would actually look like there’s not as much to do. Nonetheless, I would recommend this game to anybody. Any age, any gender, anyone who wants a joyful escape from reality for a little bit. The games have aged extremely well, and I still find myself going on my Gamecube to stop by and say hello to the neighbors I’ve grown up with and love oh so dearly. 

Got something to ask me? Wanna show me something? Want to send a  game request?
Shoot me an email at systemshuffle@hotmail.com
or check out our facebook page!

Short Review: Cooking Mama

I’m sorry for lack of photos, my phone (that I use for taking pictures) just had an update and now won’t take pictures. I’m trying to fix it.
Also, if you’re wondering why this weeks review is shorter, take a look here. 

Cooking Mama is a game developed by Office Create  and  published by Taito, 505 Games, and Majesco Entertainment. It was released worldwide for the DS in 2006, and became a very popular DS game title. Since its release, Cooking Mama has had many sequels for the DS, Wii, and soon to be 3DS, although her squeals have different themes such as babysitting, crafts, and so on.

There’s a very good reason I picked Cooking Mama as this weekend review. I have a beef with this game (no pun intended), because Mama seems all fine and friendly until you try and go for 100% completion. Before I get into that though, lets go over the gameplay. The game is pretty simple; you choose from a variety of recipes to use, you follow Mama’s directions through mini games that last no longer than 30-40 seconds, you get rated on each task, and once the recipe is complete Mama grades you with either a bronze, silver, or gold metal. You can only get gold if you complete every task perfectly. Usually, I’d have no problem with this! A little challenge has never hurt anybody! On recipes that are only 3-4 steps long, taking the time to practice a bit doesn’t take very long and allows you to get a perfect score in a matter of a few tries. On the other hand, there are some mini-game steps that has instructions so vague that you can’t possibly know what to to do without lots of  trial and error. There’s a practice mode for each recipe that allows you to go and practice the one step you’re stuck on, which also helps you with gaining a perfect score when you go to complete the full recipe. The frustrating part is when you get further into the game the recipes get longer (9-10 steps and even more when you combine recipes), so when your score is perfect until the very end and you mess up even a little bit, you have to do everything all over again or else you’ll be staring at a silver rating until you go for %100 again. It gets old really fast, and can lead to some large amounts of frustration.

Overall, this game can either be a relaxing game that you play in the car, while camping, or in your free time to just chill out for a bit or it could be the perfectionists absolute nightmare. Don’t let the cute art of the game fool you into thinking that you’re safe from rage. Fair warning though, this game is a lot like watching the food channel; Don’t play this game when hungry unless you have food available to you or you can actually cook or else you’ll be torturing yourself with the thought of food. I learned that the hard way.

Got something to ask me? Wanna show me something? Want to send a  game request?
Shoot me an email at systemshuffle@hotmail.com
or check out our facebook page!