12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a GBA: July

Sword of Mana
from Squaresoft

STEAL ALERT!!!

If you like a good RPG with solid game play, plenty of depth and a LOT of story, you can do no better than Sword of Mana for the GBA.  I kid you not.  For $5 this game is an absolute steal.  I am not a big Secret of Mana fan (I know, gasp all you like), and when I saw this game in the case at Must Have Movies and More (they changed their name, don't look at me like that) I was curious, but not hopeful.  Word of mouth had confirmed my fears and said that the game wasn't very good.  So I hesitated.  For 6 months, I looked at this game in the case and passed.  I passed it up for winners like A Sound of Thunder.  I was an idiot.

Sword of Mana is an incredible RPG that follows the adventures of a pair of youths whose fates are inexorably intertwined with the Mana Tree.  A great evil is trying to bend the power of Mana to its own dark purposes and it is the destiny of these two adventurers to prevent that from happening.  It's an old story, but it's tried and true.  When your adventure begins you may select from either the male or female character and your story will unfold accordingly.  Right off the bat, this means you get two games for the price of one.  I selected the girl story because I'm like that.  As the game unfolds you do normal RPG stuff, traveling from town to town and battling various enemies.  The battles are real time action battles, not turn based, which is kind of nice.  Turn based battling can be tedious if not properly executed.  As your adventure progresses you'll build experience and obtain different weapons.  You'll also befriend mana spirits that will enable you to use different kinds of magic based on the weapon you are wielding. 

It's all fairly standard RPG stuff, but it is a lot of fun.  There is also a surprising amount of depth in unexpected places.  Around the world, you can find different materials with which you can forge and temper your weapons and armor to improve them and give them different elemental properties.  You can also grow and harvest special fruits and vegetables that will change your weapons' attributes.  Exploring the powers and abilities of each weapon and mana spirit makes the normal grinding associated with RPG's much more enjoyable. There is plenty of fun to be had just toying around with this aspect of the game.
I will warn you, however, Sword of Mana is very story heavy.  There are sections of the game where you will spend upwards of 15 minutes just pressing A to advance the plot.  While this isn't terrible, there are a couple of places where you spend this time, enter a boss fight, lose and then have to repeat the button pressing to get back to the battle.  A save point would be nice after long swaths of story like that.  If you are into story-driven RPG's, then I can imagine no better game for you.  I did my best to follow the plot along, but it is very dense and I get the sense you cannot casually observe and get the full story.

Overall, Sword of Mana is an incredible steal for only $5.  There are easily 40 hours of game play here(80 if you play both stories) and pretty much every bit of it is engaging and fun. The story runs a bit long in parts, but this game has the good feel of a Square product (you know, pre-FFX) and promises to be a good time for RPG fans.  If you see this game for $5 like I did, do not pass it up, like I almost did!

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a GBA: June

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004
EA Sports (it's in the game...)

So how well does a 7 year old handheld port of a golf game hold up anyway?  Answer:  Incredibly well.  Unlike so many other sports games that are dependent upon a certain roster of players on specific teams, golf video games age pretty well.  Don't believe me?  Go back and play Mario Golf 64, or even further back and play NES Open.  Those games are just as fun today as they were way back when.  And why?  Because golf games are really only dated by two major things: course design and player interface.  Course design is more a function of graphics capability and execution (whether or not a water hazard looks like a water hazard and whether or not the system can recognize it as such) and it is constantly improving with every new generation of system.  Player interface is the same way. The Wii pretty much revolutionized golf gaming with its motion controllers making golf on the Wii about as close to real golf as you and get without goofy pants and a fat ass (thank you Happy Gilmore).  But through the years, the greatness of a golf game was largely a function of the swing interface and your options at the tee.  PC games stayed far ahead of the pack until the last couple of generations of console systems (some of which are just overpriced PC's anyway...)  As long as these two features are solid, a golf game can survive indefinitely.


That is a really long way to go about saying, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 for the GBA advance is one hell of a golf game, even 7 years later.  The course layouts are solid, if occasionally repetitive (looking at you Bay Hill with your sand trap in front of every green), the pin locations are vicious at the higher difficulty levels, the game controls are unusual, but not impossible, and the difficulty ramps well.

I am a video game golf pro.  I freaking rock.  Just check this score out.

Pretty sick ain't it.  Yeah, you see Tiger's sorry ass down there 9 strokes behind.  That is because I rock.  So when I tell you this game is fun, you have to know I am telling you the truth, Ruth.

Asinine bravado aside, this game is a lot of fun.  However, there were two really big hurdles for me to overcome in getting into this game.  The first was the swing control. I am used to a conventional swing meter which must be stopped twice, once for power and the other for accuracy.   Fairly standard stuff.  But TW2004 introduced me to a totally different swing control.  I'm not sure if this is how the other golf games for the GBA work, but there is no swing meter. Instead, you control your swing by first pressing UP on the d-pad and then DOWN to swing. You determine your swing by the time spent pressing UP (if you hold too long you lose power) and then down to make contact.  Power, fade or slice, can all be added during the backswing with the shoulder buttons or by taking a diagonal on the d-pad.  Spin is added once the ball is in the air.  Once you get used to it, you have pretty good control on the ball and can work it with pretty solid accuracy.

The other hurdle was elevation.  The course mapping isn't the best at showing elevation and thus you can be aiming right into the side of a hill on the overhead map and not realize it until you get back to the swing screen.  There is an elevation indicator, but judging elevation is better done by eye than by numbers.
Putting is mega easy with a laser line indicator of where your ball will travel that even adjusts for break and slope.  They even auto-putt gimmes just to save you time and the occasionally thrown GBA.  And if you really need a challenge, there just so happen to be Trophy Balls that you can earn for particular achievements.  Some are easily obtained and some will require a lot of practice and skill building before you can add them to your wall of honor.

If there are any complaints they are small.  The biggest one is the wind, which always blows right to left and has intermittent effects on game play.  Accounting for wind is a risky venture and unless it is really strong you are more often better off just playing your game.  Other quibbles include not being able to view each hole completely beyond the reach of your aim and occasional course hiccups particularly around water hazards.

All in all, though, the game is solid and ends up being a great golf game for the GBA.  I don't think age is a real factor when it comes to golf games and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 proves that. Unless you are just really hoping to play a few rounds with golf legend Bobby Jones, having the actual golfers in the game (if there are any) aren't really that big of a deal.  To me the Tiger Woods name is more there to sell games than to make me feel like I'm really playing alongside an adulterous 9-iron dodger...

STEAL ALERT!

The best news of all, since this is a sports game, chances are good you can find it tossed in the discount bin alongside NBA Jam and Madden 2001 for less than the $5 I paid.  One thing is for sure, if you are a video game golfer like me, then you are getting a steal!

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a GBA: March

Spyro: Season of Ice
by Universal Interactive

STEAL ALERT!  3 months in and we already have our first steal alert!  Spyro: Season of Ice for the GBA is a definite steal at a measly five dollars!  The game is lots of fun, pretty deep, and challenging enough to keep you coming back for more!



I don't really know that much about Spyro.  Up to this point my exposure to the little purple dragon had been a demo CD for the PSX oh so many years ago.  I was familiar with the game's cutesy main character and its roaming 3D platformer set-up, but I had never really invested any time into the games.  That said, as an introductory game, Spyro: Season of Ice is an exceptional ambassador for the franchise!

The storyline centers around our hero as he tries to free fairies who have been frozen in ice by some evil dudes that are some kind of rhinoceroses (not rhinoceri as I would have thought and preferred).  It is your job as Spyro to hunt down all 100 fairies and save them before the big bad guy, who has mistakenly given himself two heads through some nefarious mischief of his own, brutally slaughters the fairies and uses their wings to fix his self-inflicted condition (no indication how that works exactly...).  The game doesn't say "brutally slaughters," but I mean come on, it's a two-headed rhino-monster, those fairies aren't going to go quietly...

In any event, Spyro must travel to four different fairy kingdoms and free the frozen fairies either by simply finding them or by completing other tasks that will help subvert the evil rhino plot.  The good news is, you'll not have to go it alone.  Apparently, and this is where my ignorance of all things Spyro kicks in, Spyro has a dragonfly companion who goes along with him in his adventures and seemingly takes the brunt of the damage for him. (to wit, the fly represents your hit points).  In addition to being Spyro's simulacrum, the dragonfly also gets to have adventures of his own.  In each area there is a special dragonfly level that is more akin to a top-down shooter than a platformer.  These additional levels can be pretty tough and add a nice break from the platforming action.

Light all of the Jack o' Lanterns in the Autumn World and you'll free a fairy!

The majority of the game, however, is pretty standard platforming.  In each level Spyro must navigate the playfield, defeating foes and avoiding perilous pitfalls.  There are obvious fairies to find, as well as "go get this" missions from NPC's populating the levels, and other similar "mini-quests" that will ultimately reveal the captive pixies.  Level to level the basic quests change only superficially, but that doesn't discount the fun and challenge each level presents.  To give you a break from the platforming, in addition to the aforementioned dragonfly levels, each area also features a flying obstacle course that you can tackle.  These courses present the game's greatest challenge and are the only things I have not completed as of this writing.  You can free two fairies by running the course through on both the normal and hard settings.  Normal is hard enough, and hard is just stupid.  That said, it is nice to be able to take a break from a particularly frustrating level and do something else for a minute.

My one gripe with the game is the controls.  There are some levels that want precision jumping that is not really facilitated by the control set up.  Spyro's default moves are based on the standard cardinal directions, but he can also work diagonally. The problem comes when a jump needs to be aligned in just such a way, but making the diagonal work on the D-pad isn't as smooth or consistent as it needs to be.  The result is Spyro heading off in the wrong direction and ultimately dropping off the playfield.  This can make some levels more frustrating than they need to be.  Other than that, there is little to quibble about with this game, unless you just don't like whimsical platformers.

From Mermaid beaches to Time Travel Laboratories, Spyro: Season of Ice is a light-hearted, action platformer with a lot to offer, especially for only a modest Lincoln.  This game earns its Steal Alert status and is well worth half its original MSRP on the second hand market.  If you enjoy platforming games and don't mind a bit of whimsy, then don't pass up Spyro: Season of Ice!