M is for....

Mario & Yoshi

Game Boy

Another puzzle game in the vein of Tetris, woohoo, but can the combined force of Mario and Yoshi offer a challenge?

In a nutshell not really. The premise of the game is that you control Mario at the bottom of the screen who is holding plates whilst common Mario enemies drop from the top of the screen onto the plates, putting two of the same enemy together will result in them disappearing whilst catching two halves of a Yoshi egg will result in a Yoshi hatching, though for what reason I have no idea in all honesty. The enemies tend to drop two at a time and Mario can move along the bottom of the screen switching plates around to line up the enemies.

You would think that it would be fun but in all honesty I didn’t really find it to be that fun, if anything I found it to be a little bland. There are four different enemies that drop down which is fair enough but with the size of them Mario can only control four plates which doesn’t really give that much room for manoeuvre and after a while it just gets a bit boring.

Within the 15 minutes: Had reached level five.

Will I play it again? Meh, possibly but do own far better games in the genre.

Mega Man X: Command Mission

GameCube

For Command Mission Capcom decided to change the traditional platform game play for Mega Man and instead produced a turn-based RPG, but does it work?

From what I played I would say yes. It’s by far no means perfect but I still found it to be quite enjoyable. The problems for me were just small niggles like random enemy battles, random as in there are no enemies around the levels, you are just walking around an empty room and suddenly the screen changes are you are fighting an enemy. I have no problem with fighting the enemies but it would be nice for a small warning. Also the rooms are rather empty with not much to do in them except for what the mission requires. One room you enter has some broken capsules which you need to look at, can you do anything else? Nope, you just look at the capsules which are marked by a flashing green symbol, talk to Zero and then leave, that’s it.

The one boss that I encountered was quite good and quite a tough fight but the rest of the enemies unfortunately were quite easy. If Capcom had ironed out the small niggles then this had the potential to be a great game unfortunately at the moment it’s just an alright game.

Within the 15 minutes: Chapter one boss.

Will I play it again? Yes.

Metropolis Street Racer

Dreamcast

MSR was notable for introducing the ‘kudos’ system to the racing game genre, sadly they don’t get kudos from me for this game.

I’m not going to beat around the bush I found the controls to be absolutely atrocious and pretty much non responsive right from the start. The tracks have quite a few corners to go around but if you are going at any kind of fast speed you will pretty much guarantee to smack into the side of the track resulting in penalties resulting in lower kudos at the end of the race which is rather annoying as you need the kudos to unlock the next tracks. The only way to guarantee to get round the corner safely is to slow down about 3-5 seconds before getting to the corner and no I am not exaggerating with the time.

From what I played there were not actually any races against other cars it was all just drive around the track to beat the time limit which is all good and well but if it’s like that for the rest of the game it’s going to get boring rather quickly. All in all this is by far a good racing game for me.

Within the 15 minutes: Had won a car and completed three races.

Will I play it again? Doubtful.

Mission Impossible

Game Boy Colour

Mission Impossible really is quite an apt title as the game is rather stupidly and annoyingly difficult.

The aim of the first mission is to get to a stature, then enter a building and then enter another building whilst avoiding the enemy, sounds simple enough. Well it isn’t. The first thing you will notice (unless I just couldn’t see it) is that there is no map so trying to find all these things is a little difficult when every single building is almost exactly the same. The other really annoying thing is that you die with just one hit. Yes it makes it more realistic but when there are so many enemies around and when every time you die you have to start the entire mission again it can prove to be very annoying.

Despite lukewarm reviews I actually quite like the N64 version for some reason but this version just left me feeling quite annoyed and frustrated which is never good for a game.

Within the 15 minutes: First mission.

Will I play it again? It is not looking likely.

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance

GameCube

Back in the 90’s Mortal Kombat was a serious rival to Street Fighter II and a contender for the top fighting game franchise is that still the case here?

Well in this case I would say no. For me the game just felt clunky and not very enjoyable. To be honest there isn’t any particular major problem with the game it just feels a bit slow and bland compared to the likes of Soul Caliber and Dead or Alive. For this I decided to just go with the arcade mode (there is also a ‘Konquest’ mode where the player has to complete missions) and chose Scorpion as my player. One of the first things that I noticed was that your fighting style could be changed which consisted of two martial arts style and a weapon, in Scorpions case a rather nice and nifty sword. For the first four fights the AI didn’t throw up a solitary special move and it was only when I got to Sub-Zero in the fifth fight that the special moves came out.

On the plus side the different fighting styles and weapons are a nice addition and it’s good to see that 'Test Your Might' has made a comeback but overall there are far superior fighting games out there to play, unless for some reason you only own a Cube.

Within the 15 minutes: On the fifth fight.

Will I play it again? Maybe one day.