Some of the missions can be pretty challenging - for instance, a couple in the middle of the game where you're in your house, with messed up gravity, and have a limit on the number of objects you can break (tables and television sets are floating around next to champagne glasses) - but by and large, Elebits is more about tooling around and having fun than testing your performance. Much of the time, and this applies to the boss fights as well, the capture gun is objectively reduced to a twitch-fest. Don't get me wrong, the physics are still fun enough, but given that this is all the game has going for it, the novelty is beginning to wear thin (fortunately there are only a few missions left).

Despite the story and its cutscenes, the general atmosphere of Elebits is still cool and jazzy. All of the mission settings, from inside the kid's house to the streets outside to the huge theme park down the road, somehow work really well with the jazz inspired soundtrack.

The slowdown issue I mentioned before only becomes more evident as the levels get bigger and more complex (this is also incurring noticeably lengthy loading times). Busy situations will make apparent the issues of calculating and rendering the movement of tons of colliding objects. I am impressed by the sheer distance to which the character can both see and act, and the slowdown is nowhere near Perfect Dark levels, but it is still worrying that the Wii is encountering this kind of thing so early in its life. I do hope that this is due to shoddy optimization on Konami's part, and is not a sign of things to come for the little white box.

Progress: Mission 25

Initially I was wary of Elebits because of how much it looked like an insubstantial sandbox game, but based on the favorable reports of previous gloggers I decided it was worth a shot. I'm glad I did because it's way fun. I'm still getting used to the actual game mechanics and goals, but the physics of throwing junk around (and into other junk) is just too cool.

Graphically I'm reasonably impressed, though I think I noticed a bit of slowdown when a bunch of electrified elebits fell out of an appliance while other stuff was running around. The sound effects are perfect, and the background music is made up of jazzy tracks that really set the elebit-hunting mood.

While by itself the story seems fine, and the art in "cutscenes" is pretty neat, I absolutely despise the voice acting. But this is largely inconsequential.

Progress: Mission 8

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island for SNES, though at the time overlooked because of its deviation from the first SMW, is now widely recognized as canon in the platform genre (and as such was re-released in the Super Mario Advance series of remakes for GBA). But it took just over a decade for the superfun Yoshi-meets-infant-Mario model to be revisited.

Yoshi's Island DS is, so far, extremely similar to its progenitor, which is a very good thing. I just finished the first world, and though the bosses were pretty wimpy, I can already feel the platform jumping challenge warming up.

Architecturally, the only significant difference between Yoshi's Island DS and SMW2 is that there's more than one baby. Currently I can use special baby changing stations (pun surely intended) placed strategically in certain stages to change between Baby Mario and Baby Peach. Each baby has certain characteristics and abilities, for instance Baby Mario can help Yoshi run fast and hit special "M"-labelled blocks, while Baby Peach can deploy her parasol to help Yoshi stay aloft longer and catch air drafts. I haven't encountered them yet, but the manual tells me that Baby Donkey Kong, Baby Wario, and Baby Bowser will also come into play at some point. The implementation of baby abilities and baby-switching is so fluid and intuitive that it doesn't even feel like a new feature.

So far my only qualm with this guy is the camera, which is an unusual complaint for a sidescroller. What we in "the biz" call the Viewport scrolls within itself, which means that sometimes when you near the far left, right, top or bottom of a platform, it can be difficult to see your surroundings. It can be corrected by moving around a little but it feels weird not having a centered camera view.

Also, you can use the X button and up/down on the D-pad to switch the top and bottom screens; this has encouraged the level designers to make several vertically-oriented areas. Coming from a history of left-to-right platforming, this is very cool.

Progress: Stage 2-1

The pacing - direction, plot development, whatever you want to call it - of Partners in Time is all wrong. "Dungeon" areas (which are not always indoors, but are field areas in which enemies can be encountered) are too large, numerous, and populous. The links between them are also haphazard at best, with, as Brad mentioned, what amounts to a one-at-a-time sequence of rooms. On the surface this may seem like a non-issue but the story's sparsity makes most of the game feel unnecessarily claustrophobic. The game balance means that if you get fed up with constant fighting (which, given enemy abundance, can take forever), it's easy to skip some encounters, but as in any RPG this is a very delicate line.

Combat is really fun at first, but eventually becomes tiring. The four-character dynamic isn't all that different from the two-character dynamic, and with the exception of Bros. Items, the quartet actually has less abilities than Saga's duo. As for these Bros. Items, a few of them are easy and efficient, but the vast majority are just way more work than they're worth; having to coordinate four button-presses, as we should all know from Simon, stretches the limit of human reactivity.

The small-scale production of dialog scenes is pretty good. Most of the screen time in these scenes is of Mario and Luigi playing with their baby selves, and this all has great accompanying animation and sound effects. But I definitely feel like the writers lost the forest for the trees with this, in that the bigger picture is terribly mismanaged.

Still, there are parts of the game that are pretty fun, most notably boss encounters. It's actually somewhat startling, transitioning from hopelessly-easy normal enemies to hectic boss fights, which especially in the later game require pinpoint coordination of dodging and counterattacking just to survive. For this reason I would say if you enjoyed Superstar Saga and have 10-15 hours to blow, you could do worse than Partners in Time. But the GBA game is definitely the better of the two.

Progress: Beat final boss

Radiance's ending is pretty horrible. The promisingly deep plot is never given full closure; I get the impression that it's a reference to other events in the series, but standing alone this title is never truly wrapped up. Add to that a half-hour or so of agonizingly slow scrolling text and a surprisingly awful lyrical song, and you've got the 30-hour game's final moments.

But despite the sour taste the ending leaves in my mouth, I can still recall enjoying the rest of the game. There are some aspects that are mechanically frustrating - specifically, some events relying on randomness (e.g. the stat points you get when leveling up; sometimes, a unit will roll +0 on everything), and the permanent repercussions (dead characters) of mistakes. But nevertheless moving my units and murdering the enemy army was a real blast.

One of my favorite things about Path of Radiance, and this is why I'm not too motivated to look into the GBA titles, is the stellar presentation. The graphical style and detail of the battlefields and combat scenes are great, and the music, albeit repeated frequently, never seemed to get old. Plus! there were six extremely well-animated and -voiced cutscenes, which while infrequent, were very impressively done. I don't usually get hung up on aesthetics but I really have to tip my hat to Intelligent Systems on this one.

I would really like to replay this game at some point, and see the things I missed; it's just a matter of having the time for it. (Plus, I'm still not very good at it.)

Progress: Finished main game (in Easy mode)

Long story short: I bought Metal Slug Anthology because the box says it's 4 player. It isn't. True to form, the included Metal Slug games are for one or two players, no more. Caveat emptor.

Metal Slug Anthology is a 10th-anniversary collection of the seven most important games in SNK's Metal Slug series, including the never-before-purchasable Metal Slug 6. The collection also includes some underwhelming unlockables, namely image galleries, sound test music, and a text transcript of an interview with Metal Slug staff members that is basically impossible to read.

The arcade games, fortunately, are implemented (emulated?) with 100% faithfulness to the originals. Single- and two-player shooting action has few examples as prime as the Metal Slug series, and they're all here. There is not a ton of variation between the different games, but it's a lot of Metal Slugging nonetheless (and with infinite continues, there's nothing between you and raw shoot-em-up action).

For the Wii, the Anthology engineers made up a treasure trove of control schemes. In fact, so many that one suspects they were mostly an experiment. I haven't tried very many of them myself, but at least the default control setting is fairly easy to use; and many of them don't require a nunchuk, so they're very accessible.

If you're a fan of Metal Slug and/or the shmup genre, this is a collection you shouldn't go without. Plus it's great for two-player co-op. But bear in mind that the "4" on the back of the box is a typo - this is no party game.

Progress: Gave Up -- Beat Metal Slugs 1 and 2

Since I last spoke of the Wild World I began a gradual toning-down of my playing habits in it, eventually forgoing fossil collection, fruit picking, and even the weekly stalk market. I finished building up my house, and put a few new items in the museum, but by and large I was pretty much satisfied with my work.

The last thing I decided to hold out on was to get a golden axe. I completed the lengthy trading quest to get a Scallop item, which I held in order to give to town visitor Pascal in exchange for the axe. More than two months later, I continue to hold this accursed seashell; despite turning the game on to check the seashore every morning, the scurvy bum has not shown up. Thus I have finally resigned on this endeavor.

This leads in to one of my complaints about the game, namely that certain tasks take an exorbitant amount of time (and sometimes effort). Certain aspects of the game are very pick-up-and-play friendly, and some others, like this big dumb axe, could really afford to take a lesson from that.

Progress: Gave Up -- Full mansion, golden shovel and slingshot

As I go on I'm finding Partners in Time easier and easier to put down. I still like the core gameplay elements, although even with the necessary "Bros. Items" in gross abundance I rarely use special attacks; they are very difficult to pull off to the degree that they are more effective than regular jumping attacks. Perhaps that's why the battles are beginning to feel like a grind, despite the wealth of variety in figuring out how a foe will attack and how to avoid it (or turn it upon itself). I'm still holding out hope that this will change as I progress.

What bothers me the most so far is the long stretches of dungeon time. Rooms are large, enemies are very abundant, and it doesn't seem like there are as many helpful NPCs (as in Superstar Saga) willing to endow upon the super brothers new field abilities. Of course I can avoid almost all the battles and thus speed up the process considerably, but my #1 worry in any RPG is of being underleveled, so I find myself morally unable to do this.

In any event, I'm in the middle of a dungeon now, and can't wait until I get back to some witty repartee with the Professor.

Progress: Level 18, still two shards

As I continue to plod through the campaign, having now passed the 20-hour mark, I am still learning more about how the game works in every battle. As I said in reference to the early game, it is fairly easy to "get in to," but the complexity and somewhat difficulty of later chapters requires of the player a much deeper understanding of Fire Emblem's inner workings. The game has a fairly high learning curve, and if you want to do well, fairly steep.

Doing well is one of the more critical elements of Path of Radiance since, as with the rest of the Fire Emblem series, mistakes can have grave and permanent consequences. I'm speaking of the series' most oft-criticized feature: that when a member of your troop dies, he or she will never fight again (mission-critical members will stay on in an advisory role, but the majority of your team will simply die, never to return). Especially in the early game as you want for a larger force, this is a significant problem. It is expected of the player to restart a battle if this happens, and since you cannot save midway through a battle, accidentally bringing a weaker unit within archer range as you near the battle's final objective can have frustrating results.

This emphasis on precision planning is not something my game playing habits are compatible with. Luckily for me, Easy Mode is pretty forgiving, and I've only suffered a couple of casualties in my campaign so far.

What I read of unlockables after completing the game (e.g. items that enhance certain characters' strengths) makes me think that subsequent playthroughs become easier, thus making higher difficulties more achievable. There is also a very Choose-Your-Own-Adventure aspect to Path of Radiance - the majority of the chapters contain recruitable extra units (many of whom have easily-missed requirements for recruiting), and some character-related decisions will actually affect story portions of the game. Thus the idea of playing through a second or even third time is fairly tempting, but I doubt I will have the time for it, considering I currently prospect the game to have a 30+ hour length.

Nonetheless, it is still very fun, and even considerably engaging in terms of plot.

Progress: Chapter 23

Because two characters just weren't enough, Superstar Saga's follow-up adds two more: baby versions of the plumber brothers. That crazy old Professor E. Gadd has built a time machine, and through a series of predictably zany circumstances, Mario, Luigi, Baby Mario, and Baby Luigi must rescue Princess Peach (Baby Peach is safe, at least for now) from invading alien mushrooms.

As with its predecessor, the plot and storytelling in M&L2 is brilliantly humorous, and just watching dialogue play out is a real hoot. As for the gameplay, I haven't gotten far enough to get all of the bros' abilities, but it's still fun - and, given that there are four timing-intensive buttons now, coordinating big attacks can be quite a challenge.

Of course the game looks and sounds great. The characters' animations are particularly well done, especially when an adult character will perform some wacky hijinks to entertain a baby counterpart. This coupled with the pseudo-Italian jibberish sound effects the brothers have really makes the presentation shine.

Progress: Level 8, two shards