Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (NDS) -Atari 2600- Space

 

In today's look at Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1, released by Code Mystics on the Nintendo DS back in 2010, we look at games that focus on outer space.  Being the 1980s, I would have thought that there would have been more games in the Space category, but there were several games like Asteroids, Lunar Lander, and Gravitar that could have been here instead if they were not already in other categories. So we have just two games here today and just a quick heads up that the pictures I took with are a little blurry (for Star Ship) and washed out and low contrast (for Stellar Track).  Both games are a lot easier to read on the 3DS screen which is why that is something that I do not openly discuss in my review for either game.  So let us get to them.

Star Ship

Star Ship surprised me a bit.  I was not expecting a first-person space shooter like this, but something closer to either Battlezone or Submarine Commander.  Here, you can fly both left and right as well as up and down with inverted y-axis controls with ships to shoot down and obstacles to dodge.    Granted the gameplay itself was pretty rudimentary, but I still intuitively knew what I was doing and how to play the game.  The primary thing was after reading the manual to recognize asteroids which you just have to avoid as they are invincible, unlike every other object on the screen flying at you.  I was even able to play three different games, with two having different mechanics altogether.

First, there was the primary Star Ship mode which is the first-person space shooter.  You fly through space shooting objects that fly at you before they either collide with your ship or you pass them by scoring as many points in the 2 minutes 16 seconds the game gives you to play.  The Slow Obstacles mode felt a little too slow, but it was a great introduction to the game.  The Fast Obstacles was a little bit more of a challenge and I got a grasp on how best to shoot the various alien ships flying at me and how to completely avoid the asteroids.  In the Warp Drive mode, I played on Dual Obstacles, so there were two obstacles on the screen most of the time, but in this mode, you do not have guns and you just have to avoid everything.  The button simply increases your speed, which means you can cover more ground (and get a higher score) in the 2m16s, but at the risk of colliding with an obstacle with a significantly shorter reaction time.  

The Lunar Lander mode was a completely different game altogether, not even using the same perspective as either Star Ship or Warp Drive.  Instead, you have to avoid objects floating in space while you land your lander on the floating moon/asteroid.  I was a little afraid that this was going to be as complicated and frustrating as Gravitar or Lunar Lander, but the mechanics were pretty simple in that you just had to press the button when you were in close proximity to the moon and you landed.  Then you repeated the process after a second, with the point to score as many landings with as few obstacle collisions in the time allotted.

The modes here are pretty simple, but simple was a lot of fun in this case.

Verdict: Yes.

• Game 1: [1-Player Star Ship, Slow Obstacles] 32
• Game 2: [1-Player Star Ship, Fast Obstacles] 14
• Game 3: [1-Player Warp Drive, Dual Obstacles] 15
• Game 4: [1-Player Lunar Lander, Slow, Obstacles] 15

Stellar Track

Who-boy!  The instruction manual to this game was a bit beyond intimidating, almost akin to the manual to Submarine Commander.  You are told that you should keep the manual handy while you play the game so you can reference how to access certain menus because specific menus are only accessible on either the right or left joystick (meaning you scroll through menus by pressing the joystick either left or right and the right side has specific menus that are not on the left side; again, a lot of the descriptions in the manual are a lot more complicated than how the game actually operates).  I was a bit worried because as I have mentioned before, you cannot save your game to go back an look at the manual in the menu which meant that I would have to pull up the manual on my phone or computer while playing.

You are also told to know how/when the best time to use Short Range scans versus Long Range Scans, is because the energy output required costs more for an LRS than an SRS, and a specific situation may not be the best to run one scan over the other.  The manual also tells you that when engaging alien ships, it is best to have a pencil and paper (and calculator?) to "calculate the minimum energy required to destroy Aliens."  All of this attention on energy usage is because how much energy/fuel you have left at the end of the game is part of how your final score is determined.  If you do destroy all of the aliens but have used up the majority of your energy stores, you will receive a much lower score/ranking than if you are conservative with how you travel/scan/attack.  Very intimidating coming from the last group of games I played.

The game itself is both not as complicated as the manual makes it out to be, and needlessly complicated regarding how you move your ship through space; both sector space, and quadrant space.  Movement is determined by which direction you want to take your ship into warp, but you need to know the layout of which quadrant you are in (by performing a short-range scan) and if there are any obstacles in the way in the direction you want to warp as you cannot warp through a sun.  How you direct your ship is where the needlessly complicated part comes in.  Because the game is presented in columns and rows, such as being in Sector 4,5 or Quadrant 5,8 so it would make sense that you should be able to enter your coordinates in a way that would make sense, such as wanting to move to Sector 5,4.  However, to move from Sector 4,5 to Sector 5,4, you would enter coordinates 2,1.  But only if there was not a sun in your path, then you would need to move around it.

Battle against alien ships was a little confusing, partly because of the small screen size and the sudden "red alert" coloring, but also because directing your photon torpedoes ended up being similar to how you select your warp destination.  The trade-off is that if you fire torpedoes, you have to target the enemy ships yourself and if you are off by even one digit then you will miss.  If you fire with your phasors, you are guaranteed to hit, but in turn, you will use up more energy which will already be depleted when you use your warp drive to reposition your ship to be able to attack.  Then when you are hit by alien fire, which happens any time they are in your quadrant and you perform a short or long-range scan, you again lose energy.  There is a fine line to battles that I feel I have yet to master but feels somewhat manageable, but I have never been in a quadrant that had more than three alien ships in it.

The two games I played were not nearly as confusing as I had originally feared, and even with the overly confusing way of navigating and firing weapons, I oddly enough thought the game was more fun than I had feared.  The first game took just about seven minutes before I ran out of energy and the second only lasted just over four minutes because I found myself boxed in by three suns in difficult-to-navigate locations; apparently, you use up energy when you try to warp, and are blocked by a sun.  Really, if the navigating and firing had been simplified to just entering grid coordinates instead of direction and number of spaces, Stellar Track would have been a lot easier to say that this was a Yes game.  As it stands, it is more of a weak Yes, but one that I would likely come back to in order to have another go at it.

Verdict: Yes

• Game 1: Surrender to the Aliens / Cadet
• Game 2: Surrender to the Aliens / Cadet

I did appreciate that both of the Space games were significantly different from one another and amongst the two games, there were three different types of games.

In the next series of games, we start on March 10th, and we will be three weeks of sports games.  So if you are a sports fan or someone who likes to read about antiquated sports video games from 35+ years ago, we will have a lot for you to digest.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Beware Humans

P.S.  Stellar Track was the last game I played, being the most intimidating game in the collection due to how unconventional it was.  I did start it earlier than the Sports games, but after seeing what I was in for amounted to a pen/paper-type resource management space-sim, I backed out and came back to it last.  I think that is partially why my review of it is so much longer than just two paragraphs.  It could also be why I ended up with such a favorable opinion of such a strange game.  It definitely has that getting dads into video games who would never play Pac-Man energy.

MIDI Week Singles: "The Poet and the Muse" - Alan Wake (PC)

 

"The Poet and the Muse" from Alan Wake on Xbox 360, Windows (2012)

Composer: The Old Gods of Asgard*

Album: In the Valley of My Shadow, & Alan Wake OST**

Label: Self Published, & Steam

Publisher: Xbox Games Studio & Remedy Entertainment

Developer: Remedy Entertainment

There is a lot of good music in Alan Wake, a lot of which was pre-existing music that was played during the credits sequence like the end credits of a TV show, which fit in with the whole presentation of the game.  That is not to say that the original music composed by Petri Alanko was bad, but it fits very well with the setting and the type of game being told and as we have learned over the last two decades, that survival horror (and action survival horror) games typically have fitting music, but not necessarily melodic pieces that you can hum while at home cooking dinner or doing dishes.  There are obvious exceptions in Eternal Darkness, Dead Space 3, Layers of Fear, or Silent Hill, but for the most part, music in this genre tends to be subdued.

Since we featured Alan Wake on Monday, I knew that I wanted to use a track from the game, and one of the more interesting pieces of original music for me was "The Poet and the Muse" from the in-game group, The Old Gods of Asgard.  The song itself fits two facets of the game.  First, it is entertaining as a song in its own right.  Secondly, it functions as a puzzle for Alan Wake to solve in how he can save Alice from the Dark Presence.  If I am being honest though, the meaning of the song was lost on me while playing, and only after beating the game and listening to the song again, with all of the information I had gathered did the meaning behind the lyrics actually make sense.  The only negative thing I have to say about "The Poet and the Muse" is that I cannot imagine Odin Anderson as they are portrayed in the game singing and/or performing this song.  Their other song, "Children of the Elder God" seems more in line with their style of 1960-70s harder Black Sabbath.  Maybe this was just a softer side of their music brought on by interactions with Thomas Zane.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

But Hidden Inside the Delusion

*P.S.  I love that there is a webpage for The Old Gods of Asgard as if they were a real band akin to Spinal Tap, but in a found footage kind of way.  And after writing this article, I think I will go and listen to more of what Poets of the Fall have to offer

**P.P.S.  The song is also available on the soundtrack as paid DLC through Steam which also comes with a bunch of other stuff that I haven't fully checked out yet.

Game EXP: Alan Wake (PC)

 

Alan Wake

Systems: May 14, 2010, & February 16, 2012

Release Date: Xbox 360, Windows

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios & Remedy Entertainment

Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Time Spent: ~18 Hours

This is going to be a difficult article to write, partly because I feel like I do not have a whole lot to say that I pretty much did not already cover in my First Impressions article.  Most of the developments that happened in the game beyond the basic mechanics of going from Point A to Point B happened within the story and the inclusion of two additional enemy types.  Sure, there were the different types of guns and the larger and more powerful flashlights (but were they really more powerful if the enemies became stronger too?) and my tactics did frequently change based on how much ammunition I had for any particular gun or if I had flares/flashbangs, but the biggest change in the game primarily happened in how the story unfolded and the revelations and realizations that occurred to Mr. Wake.  

Part of my brain approached this article how I would if I were to write about the first season of Twin Peaks, which Alan Wake was heavily based on in regards to the setting of a small town in the Pacific Northwest, and the eccentric characters in the town of Bright Falls.  This is not too far off of a way of thinking of this game as it was designed and presented with a serial TV series in mind with each section of the game being its own episode, complete with a "Previously, on Alan Wake" recap of key events that happened in the previous chapter, a cliff hanger ending nearly every episode, and complete with end credits and usually, a banger of a song.

There were several times during the game where I felt that I had lost the story, that I was only traveling from one end of a linear stage to the next, often following the next lit lamp post or a building with a light on.  At one point, Conklederp asked why I was at a farm full of concert equipment and fireworks, and all I could remember was that it had something to do with two rocker guys that I had previously met at a diner, then again at some kind of mental health hospital and they told me I should go there.  And even after listening to the record that Alan was directed to listen to, I was still confused why the character of Alan Wake felt that this record held some kind of epiphany.  It was not until the next episode that why all of those events had been important, which if you take into account some of the storytelling of Twin Peaks, is actually par for the course.  By the end of the game though, all, or most of the pieces had fallen into place, with the exception of who and/or what Mr. Scratch was, as his brief introduction by Thomas Zane made it seem like I should have known who he was.

The biggest thing about Alan Wake that bothered me though was all of the various collectibles.  The coffee thermoses.  The signs to read.  The hidden storage boxes.  The radio shows listened to. The TV shows watched.  The pyramid of cans knocked over.  This created the feeling that Alan getting back to the cabin to find out what happened to Alice as trivial when you could get out of your car to look through a campsite for a pile of cans to knock over.  Unless this was some attempt by the developers to make some kind of statement about Alan's history with alcohol?  I can understand the number of manuscript pages as those were actually relevant to the story although I still do not like that there were certain pages locked behind a difficult skill wall.  This feels like a cheap way to create replayability where it did not need to exist.

I do not know if I am in the minority, but I do consider Alan Wake to be a survival horror, as a lot of the set pieces take place in dark areas, there is typically limited ammunition, or at times a lot of handgun ammo and only a few shotgun shells and one flare and flashbang grenade each.  There was relief every time you made it under a lit lamp post because you knew that the enemies would either disappear completely or just not follow you through the light.  And then the lamp post would burst and you would need to run/stutter-jog to the next light source.  I know the game gets categorized as an action/adventure game, even by Remedy Entertainment, but I personally consider this to be a solid survival horror that takes a slightly different direction in terms of the setting and the enemies.

I was more-or-less impressed with myself in terms of beating the game, although because I did not collect all the things, I would not dare say that I completed the game.  There were a few instances where I thought I might have been lost, but because so much of the game was linear with some light puzzle solving (thankfully no sliding block puzzles), I never felt so lost that I needed to consult a guide to help me find my way.  There were a couple of instances where I needed to replay a combat scenario several times because I kept dying, but for the most part, the game never felt impossible or that enemies acted like the bullet sponges that survival horror games (looking at you Resident Evil) like to throw at players, especially at the end of the game.  I did enjoy the game enough to warrant an immediate playthrough of the two Specials (DLC) after the main game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (NDS) -Atari 2600- Racing

 

Welcome back to our near-weekly dive into the games from the 2009 Nintendo DS release of Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 from Codemystics.  Today we move on from "Mind Games" and go full tilt into three "Racing" games with mixed results.  This "Racing" category was a bit of a strange one in that only one of the three games was a pure racing game while the other two had shooting/hunting type games with only minor racing elements.  Math Gran Prix would have fit well into this category too if it was not already in "Mind Games."  Not that two of these titles not being actual racing games biased my opinion of them as I played them on their own gameplay merits and not what the category supposedly promised.

Dodge 'Em

So for the first three games, I thought I was playing Slot Racers and was confused as to what was going on and why I could not shoot a missile at the oncoming car or really what was going on.  Then I realized my mistake, reread the instructions for Dodge 'Em, and played again.  As you can tell from my scores, reading how the game plays only slightly improved my scores.  One of several problems I have with this game is that it moves almost too fast.  You can finish an entire game, with a low-low score of 080 in 33 seconds.  There is almost no time for you to realize what it is that you did wrong or how to improve apart from just playing over and over again with only minimal feelings that you are getting anywhere.

The point of the game is to race around an area with different channels and an enemy car is hunting you in the opposite direction you have to change lanes, but only in specific locations and you have to press the joystick in that direction at that specific time or you are likely to crash head-on into the enemy car.

I just did not have any fun.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: 056

Game 2: 065

Game 3: 052

Game 4: 074

Game 5: 067

Game 6: 088

Game 7: 073

Game 8: 088

Game 9: 108

Game 10: 075

Slot Racers

The game tells you right up front that this game is designed for two players, but if you have two 3DS' with two copies of the game, then you can play Slot Racers the way the gods intended, otherwise it is like playing Monopoly by yourself with two pieces.  You decide which piece you are going to favor while controlling two pieces and hope you do not lose to yourself.

The point of this game is to drive around one of a handful of mazes while chasing your opponent and shooting at them.  Depending on the mode, your shots will either travel at the same speed as your vehicle or faster.  Playing this game by myself was strange and at times, very unfair because I could position myself in a way that would allow me to be behind the other car and just take shots at the other car (and because I was controlling both sets of cars with the one controller) would also shoot me, but because I was behind them, my shot would hit them before their shot would hit me, and when they were hit, they would be propelled forward a bit and absorb their own shot.

Maybe this would play better as a two-player game, but until the day I find someone with an Atari 2600 or someone else with this game on their DS/3DS, I will likely never play this again.  I also think it was a bad decision to have a two-player-only game that could be operated like this, in this collection; which has happened several times actually so far.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: [Medium Cars, maze 4] 5 - 3

Game 2: [Fast Cars, Maze 1] 20 - 13

Sprintmaster

Sprintmaster was Atari's console attempt of the arcade Sprint series where you drive a stock car (although the cover art does depict an F-1 race car, we can forgive that I guess) around a track with variable shapes and road conditions.  The thing with Sprintmaster is that I think, with time, I could probably get pretty good at this game, figuring out the best way to flutter-tap the accelerator around curves, when the best time (if ever) to grab the traction or speed-up buffs on the track and the best way to use (if ever) the "unpredictable tar slick" going into curves.  

I can see the appeal of the game, but it is just not for me for a couple of reasons.  First, I played the game nine times and only won one race on the easiest round track on the easiest difficulty setting, which really just goes to show how poorly I played the game.  Second, any track that has an under/overpass completely obscures your car from view, so if you happen to wedge yourself against a wall, trying to get out pretty much ends any chance you have at winning the race because there is no reverse, so yeah.  Secondly, making any changes to the race, you have to completely back out of the game and restart, such as changing from Crash to Bounce (when impacting a wall), the number of laps, or even the race track and the surface.  It only takes a few seconds, but it feels cumbersome and time-consuming.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: [1-Player - Crash - 3 Laps; Track 01, Blacktop] Lost

Game 2: [1-Player - Crash - 3 Laps; Track 01, Blacktop] Lost

Game 3: [1-Player - Crash - 3 Laps; Track 01, Dirt] Lost

Game 4: [1-Player - Crash - 3 Laps;  Track 01, Dirt] Lost

Game 5: [1-Player - Crash - 3 Laps; Track 01, Ice] Lost

Game 6: [1-Player - Crash - 3 Laps; Track 01, Ice] Lost

Game 7: [1-Player - Crash - 3 Laps; Track 01, Ice] Won

Game 8: [1-Player - Crash - 3 Laps; Track 03, Dirt] Lost

Game 9: [1-Player - Bounce - 3 Laps; Track 04, Ice] Lost

So there we have it.  Sprintmaster was the only real racing game while the others only felt somewhat tangentially related to racing as they were geared more toward attacking or avoiding the other player/car; you know, like Battle Mode in Mario Kart.  I really wanted to like Sprintmasters too because the game felt good for the most part, but I think a large part of it boiled down to me not being a great player with these types of games (RC Pro-Am, Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road), and the obscured road with overpasses, which ultimately meant that the one real racing game in "Racing" still received a No from me.  Yeah, 0:3 is not a great record and if you take in these last two categories, we are at a 2:9, but I promise some more promising titles in the coming weeks.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Was Set Up to Fail

MIDI Week Singles: "Onion Woods" - Onion Assault (NS)

 

"Onion Woods" from Onion Assault on the Nintendo Switch and Steam (2023)

Composer: Arne Hörberg

Album: Onion Assault Original Soundtrack

Label: Bandcamp

Publisher:  Hörberg Productions

Developer:  Hörberg Productions

A couple of things about this song that I love.  Let us start with this specific song first before we get briefly into the music in general.

I love that the bassline is carried by what sounds to me like a crazy-ass bassoon player.  I love that the song sounds like it could be performed by a trio consisting of the aforementioned crazy-ass bassoon player, a flautist, and a drummer.  A rather odd combination for a trio in theory, but it works wonderfully here.  There is something about the tone of the bassoon that works well for a deep woods feel.  The flute works well here too carrying the melody because a flute in the woods is a great instrument to have its sound carried through rustling trees and hurled onions.  And the drums are there to fill in the spaces between and act as a driving mechanism for the rest of the song.

What I love about the music in the game is that it comes across as very quintessential Arne  Hörberg.  If you listen to his music from Gunman Clive 1 & 2, you will get what I mean.  The downbeats in this soundtrack are a little more pronounced, but with how nearly everything in the game moves to the literal beat of the music, that emphasis works well as it helps tie the entire game together.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
It Will All End in the Dirt Again

Game EXP: Onion Assault (NS)

Onion Assault

Systems: Nintendo Switch & Steam

Release Date: January 27, 2023

Publisher: Hörberg Productions

Developer: Hörberg Productions

Time Spent: 5 hours, 26 minutes

Onion Assault was a fun game in the purest sense of the phrase.  It is a platforming game where you control one of two characters (who play identically) with the primary mechanic being similar to Super Mario Bros. 2 where you can stand on and pick up (nearly) any enemy in the game to use them as projectiles against other enemies.  There are exceptions like the spiny snake or one of the larger inverted turrets that you cannot pick up.  But the tank, you can pick that up.  And throw it.  You can also grab the shell fired from the tank after you throw it to then throw it back at the tank.  Onion Assault feels like it was designed to be fun, and it is just that.

The story in the game is about as minimal as you can get.  You play as either Pelle Lök or  Mama Lök whose home/onion farm in Onionia is overrun by the evil Imperial red army and you fight back against the invaders using everything at your disposal.  There is no text or dialogue in the game so even the name of Onionia was taken from the track list of the soundtrack (more on the music in a bit), but there does not really need to be exposition as you traverse through the four stages of each of the four worlds/settings.  Each stage slightly builds on core mechanics like timing jumps around enemies, and hitting switches on the fly, while the game gets progressively gets more and more difficult without feeling unfair, as a well-designed video game is supposed to do.

There are a couple of changes to established video game construction from what I can tell, but they work.  Like many platformers, there are coins/bars to collect, but unlike the standard 100 coins = free life, here you only need 50, but coins and lives are not as plentiful as in Super Mario World, so having that quota of 50 is really nice.  And while you do have lives that will eventually run out after dying too many times (semi-frequently), thankfully the primary purpose of lives is to be able to restart from mid-level checkpoints after dying.  Once you use your last life, you have to start the stage over from the beginning with three lives, which creates some incentive to not be wasteful with your lives.  But as is the case with well-thought-out level design, a lot of the stages feel challenging at first, especially getting to that first checkpoint, but on subsequent run-throughs, either because of dying or collecting the large coins, the jumping and timing feel second nature and those once hard areas become a literal breeze to pass through.

In addition to the gold bars/coins, there are the extra large coins in the game that are, more often than not, tucked away in a place that might be difficult to reach or access or in some cases rewarded for defeating a particular enemy or killing a group of enemies in a specific manner; playing through a level more than once was sometimes required.  For whatever reason, after I had left two uncollected coins in two different stages, I decided that I would be playing as Pelle Lök to beat the stage, and any missing large coins would be collected using the Mama Lök character.  Again, since there was no discernable mechanical difference between the two characters, this was done purely for roleplaying purposes.  There was one large coin that I was unable to collect, so at least at the moment, I am not sure if anything special happens when you collect all the large coins from each stage, but they could just be there for challenge purposes.

The music!  The music was composed by Bertil Horberg's brother, Arne, who has also composed the music for previous games from Horberg Productions and the quality of music continues here as well.  Although none of the themes come across as particularly oniony, all of the themes are appropriately upbeat and bouncy.  Croquetto Castle however does have a rather ominous feel to it, but that could also be because I died a lot I love that not only the enemies walk in time to the music, but a lot of the background elements like trees, bushes, clouds, and sometimes floating bits of candy, all move in time with the music in a way that does not come across as visually distracting.  

I will be posting a MIDI Week Single article on Wednesday featuring one of the songs from the game, so stay tuned for that.

I would be surprised if there are not already people complaining about the length of the game being only 16 stages long and beaten in only a few hours.  I counter that the game is the perfect length because there is no fluff, and levels feel comfortably paced although tougher levels will sometimes feel longer because they are more difficult to plow through.  Going into the battle with the final boss, I was happy to see a recurring theme from the Gunman Clive games but also thankful that there was not more than one form or stage that the boss took; being one of my problems with completing Mechstermination Force.

If you like the mechanic from Super Mario Bros. 2 where you can pick up enemies or pick items up from the ground and use them as projectiles, there is a very good chance that you will enjoy Onion Assault.  I cannot definitively comment on the replayability of the game as I feel like I still need to collect that one last large coin just to see if it unlocks anything apart from bragging rights.  And even though there is no timer counting down in each stage (thankfully), this would probably be a great game for those in the speedrunning community.  But yeah, Onion Assault was a blast to play from minimal start to satisfying end.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Fought the World Today

Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (NDS) -Atari 2600- Mind Games Pt. 2

 

This collection of titles from the Mind Games category in Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 on the Nintendo DS was harder to get into.  Some of the proverbial roadblocks consisted of my internal bias against playing board game-style games against a computer opponent, gameplay limited by the number of players, and game controls.  Most of the games in this backend collection of Mind Games I have played in one form or another but I still tried to approach each title with an open mind in terms of being adapted to the Atari 2600, but in some cases, those internal biases ran pretty deep.

Hangman

I guess one of the nice things I have to say about Hangman, is that because you are playing against a computer with computer rules, you know how many guesses you actually have, whereas, against a real person, you may not know if they are going to draw the neck as one against or is the neck and the body going to count as one against and not two?  Hangman here gives you 11 wrong guesses to guess a four to six-letter word before it draws a monkey.  The monkey means you lose.  And let me tell you, despite the 3rd-grade vocabulary supposedly choosing from an easier selection of words, the two games I played had only four-letter words and that is difficult to do.  As you can see on my scores, in both 3rd-grade games I had the most misses and I even lost on the second 3rd-grade game because I only guessed the A correctly for "BALL."  I am sure that there is some kind of trick/skill to guessing a four-letter word correctly in 11 guesses.  Yeah, RSTLNE I guess.

I mean, this is really just Hangman that you would play on the chalkboard/whiteboard in school as many times as you want, and Wordle I only have to play once per day.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: [1 Player, Up to High School Vocabulary] CODDLE (4/11)

Game 2: [1 Player, Up to 3rd Grade Vocabulary]  HOUR (8/11)

Game 3: [1 Player, Up to 6th Grade Vocabulary] INSECT (1/11)

Game 4: [1 Player, Up to 9th Grade Vocabulary] SHREWD (6/11)

Game 5: [1 Player, Up to High School Vocabulary] PLAIN (3/11)

Game 6: [1 Player, Up to 3rd Grade Vocabulary] bAll (11/11)

Game 7: [1 Player, Up to 6th Grade Vocabulary] SECRET (4/11)

Math Gran Prix

Hmmm.  I have mixed feelings about Math Gran Prix.  For its concept, I love the idea of turn-based mechanics for games and genres that you would not normally think would mix well, like wrestling or in this case, car racing.  This actually plays a lot like a board game in that you determine if you want to move 2 or 3 spaces, with the higher number of spaces being equivalent to a harder math problem.  If you get the problem correct, you move your number of spaces and if you get it wrong, you do not move at all.  The opposing car essentially does the same thing, but I never once saw the computer-controlled car not move for getting a problem incorrect, which does not really seem all that fair.  You can also bump the other car off of the track if you land on the same space, making them lose a turn, and there are buffs on the track that allow you to take an extra move, protect you from being bumped off, etc.

My problem with Math Gran Prix is pretty much the same problem that I have with all board games played against a computer opponent.  The computer can fudge its rolls, especially on the space that lets you move between 1 - 4 additional spaces if you land on it (like a slot machine).  On my last race (Game 3), I was seven spaces ahead of the computer car which I had bumped off of the course.  I was one space away from crossing the finish line.  On their turn, the computer moved three spaces, landed on the buff that lets you move again, and they "rolled" a 4, so they bumped my car off of the track.  On my next turn, I "repaired my car" and they moved and won the race.  Yes, I am that kind of a paranoid person that believes that in these games, the computer-controlled character will cheat because it can, rolling the maximum number of spaces (on the 1-4 extra spaces buff), and never getting a math problem wrong.  But I did win one race, so I got that going for me.  Which is nice.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: [Addition and Subtraction, Medium (1-Player)] Lost

Game 2: [Addition and Subtraction, Hard (1-Player)] Won

Game 3: [Multiplication and Division, Hard (1-Player)] Lost

Surround

First off, of the 12 different play modes in the game, only two are playable as a single-player experience, leaving me only able to play in the standard up/down/left/right movement instead of diagonals, and you have to play surrounded by walls instead of the Wrap Around.  And you cannot engage the Erase, which allows you to strategically not leave tracks or erase your own as you play.  So, Surround is basically like the Light Cycle game in the Tron arcade, or essentially a competitive game of two-player Snake (except your tail/trail is permanent).

The first of the two modes play at a consistent speed, which is pretty slow and ate up most of my time.  Maybe because I played on the B difficulty, being for amateurs, that dragged the game out. However, once I figured that I just had to literally surround the computer player by staying away from them while still encircling them, I managed to win 10 to 3.  The controls did not feel great, although on my second game, I used the directional pad and the responsiveness felt a little better.  The second game I played was in Speed Up mode, which increases the speed of all the players at the same time and it quickly becomes a game of "How fast can you react while anticipating the next speed up."  The second game felt a little more exciting, but ultimately, eh.

Had there been more modes accessible in single-player mode, I could see my verdict being seated towards a Yes, but knowing what is essentially locked behind a wall (because I apparently don't have friends?) leaves a lot of potential unplayable, and that makes me sad.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: [2: 1-Player]: 3 - 10 (win)

Game 2: [4: 1-Player with Speed Up]: 10 - 8 (lost)

Video Checkers

The most interesting thing about Video Checkers was from the game manual, where it stated that the game is not capable of having the game board on the screen at the same time that the computer is deciding on the move it is going to make, so to save on processing power, the screen will flash black for an amount of time determined by the level of difficulty you are playing at.  The harder the difficulty, the longer the screen flashes black, from anywhere between 1.5 seconds up to 15 minutes.  The rest of the game is just Checkers with a really bad and clunky control scheme.

Because in Checkers, you can only move your pieces diagonally, Atari apparently thought it was a good idea to only let you move your cursor diagonally (although there might have been additional coding/scripting/whatever involved having the cursor be able to move in a different way than the pieces) by requiring to hold the joystick diagonally for over a second.  And moving your flashing X cursor is not nearly as responsive as you would want it to be, often requiring the directional pad or joystick to be held down for a good second or more before the cursor actually moves.  I stuck to using the directional pad because I felt that the joystick on the 3DS was not precise enough for the game to register that I wanted to move the cursor.

And I lost because I stopped caring and because I am bad at both Checkers and Video Checkers and apparently cannot fully grasp the concept of controlling the center while the other players' pieces surround me on the edges with their backsides protected and destroying my little Checker army.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: Lost

What kind of surprised me about not only this selection of Mind Games, but all of the games that fell under this category, is that my gut reaction was that I had a lot of fun with these games. But then when I look at all of the games together, I only "Yes'd" two out of seven games, which is not great (28.6%).  Where I think a lot of those feelings stem from were Math Gran Prix, and Surround which felt like they really had potential, coupled with how pleasantly surprised I was by 3D Tic-Tac-Toe and how satisfying Atari Video Cube was even if not playing competitively, all created a false memory of actually enjoying more of the games than I actually did.  I cannot decide if that is good or bad, but I know that whenever I throw Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 back into the 3DS I will give this category another go.  

Except Video Checkers.  Or Fun with Numbers.  Maybe Surround.  

Maybe.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Falling Prey to Absurdity