Video Game Tuesday: Mini Games

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a topic that bugs me sometimes about some older games. It’s all about Mini Games!

Mini Games?: Games within a game, usually pretty simplistic and don’t always impact the larger game. This is the most common place and way they are implemented.

There are other ways?: Yes! Some games like WarioWare, or Cooking Mama, are pretty much all separate Mini Games, although they tend to have some thematic connection. Still that is all those games are, Mini Games and there is no larger over arching gameplay, or plot to them.

So what’s the problem?: Frankly I just see the latter type of games as cash grabs by the developers in order to grab a niche corner of the gaming market. Thankfully they aren’t nearly as prevalent as they were a bit over a decade ago, but I still don’t really enjoy it when publishers make a big “game” made up of purely mini games.

But they were great for short play periods!: Yes, that’s the problem I have with them pretty much exactly. They were meant to be played for very short bursts, and your progress didn’t really matter in the end from one play session to the next. They were made as pure time waster games, rather than something that had a progression path, be it an RPG with leveling up or other types of games like Pokemon where you tried to catch em all.

But you must have liked at least a few Mini Games?: Yes, some were great. Like the matching color game in Mega Man ZX, which played a lot like Bejeweled, or the Bejeweled add-on in World of Warcraft, back when people had to wait on Flight Paths for many minutes. Those were great for short bursts, or when you were waiting on your raid group to get together, however I could always go back to the larger game as a whole after those periods.

That’s my small rant and my final post for 2019! See you all next year, or in four days.

Retro Game Friday: Mega Man ZX

This week on Retro Game Friday I’m covering the sequel series to Mega Man Zero! It’s Mega Man ZX!

Plot Synopsis: Mega Man ZX takes place 200 years after the end of the Mega Man Zero series, in the year 25XX. in which humans and Reploids now coexist peacefully. After some time of peace and prosperity; humans, reploids, and the Humanoids (cyborgs in the Mega Man ZX universe) of Earth manage to revive some of the former Nations. After which, several incidents of mechanical lifeforms becoming Mavericks. The Mavericks made several areas dangerous. Trading between nations became obstructed, which caused the nations to become divided into utopia-like cities such as “Innerpeace.” These cities became safe havens for peaceful reploids, humans and humanoids. The dangerous Mavericks known as Mechaniloids began to appear in the outlands and threatened the peace. The utopia-like cities and the outlands were divided into separate Areas and remarkable developments were made due to the efforts of the corporation Slither Inc. Slither Inc. possessed technology unearthed from ruins in the Outlands. Peaceful life in Innerpeace is maintained by using the technology offered by Slither Inc. Still, Maverick attacks occur in the frontier regions, which are more exposed to the enemy. To repel the attacks, the humanoids in these areas developed an organization devoted to the defending their region. This organization is known as the Guardians. The Guardians defend the Outlands and investigate the cause of the Maverick attacks. The original leader of the Guardians disappears during the investigation of an Outlands area.

Ten years prior to the beginning of the story, the protagonists, Vent (ヴァン Van) and Aile (エール Ēru) lose their mother to a Maverick raid in the amusement park and become orphans. They were taken in by Girouette (ジルウェ Jiruwe) or Giro, the owner of Giro Express, which is a delivery service delivering all kinds of items. Giro is contacted by an unknown person to deliver an important package to a rendezvous point in the Area A forest.

Plot: The plot is actually pretty decent, nothing spectacular however. I enjoyed the fact that it introduced new characters that wasn’t X or Zero, although they do make small cameos sort of.

Characters: I played as Aile first and then played as Vent, there were very few differences between the characters except for some lines of dialogue. Giro was easily my favorite character in the game.

Gameplay: It plays quite a bit like Mega Man Zero, although the ability to switch between different models in combat to fit the situtation was quite nice.My favorite was Model HX although Model ZX is quite fun.

Art: It looks and feels a lot like Mega Man Zero and that’s not a bad thing.

Music: I actually listened to the music for this game! It was amazing.

Overall: If you haven’t played this yet, you ought to as it’s just good fun.

For those who like: Mega Man, Mega Man Zero, Sidescrollers, Gameplay that is actually Difficult.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.