On Sunday, I got back to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Switch, which I had been intending to beat two months ago, but I got a couple of game overs at the final boss and got frustrated with myself. So I took a break. But on Sunday I got it first try. This is a great game, and I do intend to try 100% it! This morning I beat Shark Tale on GameCube. This game was a bit disappointing. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I'd expected more because there was an ad for this game in Shrek 2, which is my favourite GameCube game so far. However, while both published by Activision, Shrek 2 was also developed by Activision, while Shark Tale was developed by a second or third party (Edge of Reality), so it makes sense that it wasn't as good. I do not intend to try 100%ing it, as the game works with missions, where you have to clear the main mission to beat the stage (usually the main mission is essentially 'beat the stage'). Then there is a 'bonus mission' and an 'elite mission', and several of the elite missions seem obnoxiously hard. So I decided to just not even try. Edit: Ah, both games keep track of your playtime, that's always an interesting statistic I think. I've got a bit over 40 hours into The Thousand-Year Door, and 3 hours into Shark Tale.
The Switch version looks really cool, Nintendo did a great job with altering the Gamecube ISO with superior graphics, and even implementing shaders at runtime. Some of the tracks are too overkill for me, but I do love their artistic takes on them regardless. Definitely takes me back to when I was a kid when this game first game out for the Gamecube!
I beat the Story mode of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania on Switch recently. It has no new stages, it's the same as Super Monkey Ball Deluxe from 2005, but I haven't played that game. I enjoyed most of it, although there were quite a few stages that I found too gimmicky. The levels that I enjoyed most were those that did not include any moving parts but were quite difficult. I also beat Donkey Kong Country 2 on GBA. I think I'll try going for 100% completion, but I might give up before getting there, as completing DKC games tends to be rather tricky. And I somehow forgot to post something really big... after almost 15 years, I 100%ed Mario Kart: Super Circuit!! I actually recorded a video to commemorate it. It's 20 minutes long, though, so it might not be worth watching.
I beat Monsters, Inc. on GBA on Hard mode. If I recall correctly, this is a game that was really disappointing to Joy? My experience with the game is weird. I knew I played it a bit as a kid, but got bored and didn't finish it. I thought I'd left it at that, and when I started playing the game again recently, I thought the later levels were new to me. But then I found a note on my phone that had the passwords to all of the game's levels. xD (but on Easy difficulty) So apparently I had beaten it before, but I don't remember at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyway, the game surprised me! It was more fun than I remembered. The level layouts did seem really uninspired, until I realised that they were procedurally generated, and are different on each playthrough. That's actually pretty cool, and makes me a lot more forgiving of the level 'design'. Overall, I ended up giving it a 7/10. I also played through World Championship Sports on Wii. This is more of a party game, with lots of sports-based mini-games designed for multi-player. You can play the games single player, but except for the final minigame there's no AI, so I thought there wasn't really an objective to go for. However, when I had almost finished playing through all of the mini-games, I realised that after completing the game, there were three possibilities: either your character would play a disappointed animation, or an 'I did it!' animation, or it would simply stick with the idle animation. Which of the three animations played depends on the score you got in the game. So then I decided to play through all the games again and go for the 'I did it!' animation. It was fun to actually have some type of goal. However, I did not enjoy most of the mini-games. The challenge was in figuring out how the controls were supposed to work, and I did not find most of the games satisfying. I ended up giving the game a 4/10. It's probably better with friends, though! Although if you've got it, I'm sure you had better play Wii Sports. (I do not, though!)
Sorry for the double post, but I just completed another game! This is The Smurfs: Dreams, from Ocellus Studio. I really enjoyed their first game, Marsipulami: Hoobadventure, so I was quite excited to play their second! I was not expecting to enjoy it as much, as it is a 3D platformer rather than a 2D platformer, and I tend to prefer 2D platformers in general, and moreover it is harder to get a 3D platformer right, in my experience. But they did a good job! I did indeed not like it quite as much as their first game, but it was quite a good experience! The time shown is off, by the way, it took me less than 15 hours to complete the game. I think I left my Switch in sleep mode once because I wasn't able to finish the level before my train journey ended, and then the timer kept on counting overnight.
