Thursday, April 26, 2012

Kid Icarus Uprising 3DS Review

Kid Icarus Uprising 3DS Review

I have just finished throwing the greatest shot possible in the Universe, aimed at Hades. Predictably, he disintegrated into nothingness. It feels good to save the Universe. Now, onto difficulty challenge level 1.0!

Yep, it was Kid Icarus Uprising 3DS game, and it's brilliant! The story is engaging. The imageries mesmerizing. The game pace is pitch perfect, mainly because it is adjustable in very fine increment. The amount of weapons available is just mind-boggling, and the special challenges are extremely tricky, indeed. And the control, well, it can be better. A lot better.

There is a reason why they keep saying that you need to get used to the control ... a lot. They say that because you need to get used to the control. I would like to say that the control scheme is defective, but I can't. Not when just about everything else is brilliantly done. This isn't a game designed by some idiot-savant. This is a game designed by a master.

So, then, why, if everything else is perfect, the controls aren't good? Thinking about it carefully, I come to the conclusion that the control is great for the flying sequences where you can just float around and pick enemies one by one. When it comes to the ground fight, however, we have a problem. You need to move and dash and fire, not necessarily at the same direction. Move and dash is taken care of by the Circle Pad. L button fires the weapon. Looking around is touch screen. Aiming is touch screen. Okay, so we have looking around and aiming using the same touch screen. That's problematic.

How do we solve this? Looking around and aiming can be split into 2 different controls. That would work well, if people have 3 hands. Oops.

What else can we do? I like to Resident Evil Revelations solution: Use the gyroscope control to look around. It works really well in that game. I think it will work really well here, too. Until we get to Internet melee, that is. I can just imagine it, people rotating wildly, screaming "I've been hit! I've been hit! Where is he? I can't see him!"

Not a good solution.

Criticizing bad solution is easy. Any monkey can do that. But coming up with a good solution isn't. I'm not convinced that there is a good solution for this game. It is possible that you may have to use 3 different control schemes for this one game.

Which shows you just how expansive, and encompassing this game is. This is really 3 games in one, and it is all brilliantly combined. You have shooting game, adventure game, and FPS game. I like that. I don't like the control, but I can see that it isn't from stupidity or laziness. It's trying to have a consistent control across different gameplay.

I really like this game, easy and challenging in one game. I do wish that they would let me have different control schemes and perhaps the option to separate the flying scenes and the adventure scenes. They do provide boss challenge at the end, but I'd rather have selectable scenes, similar to that of the DVD movies.

All in all, everybody should play this game. The better for me to beat you on the Internet. ;)

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