Wii U Transfer Tool: Nintendo's attention to detail

After backing up my Wii, so that I could restore everything afterwards, I transferred everything over to my new Wii U.  That's my new new Wii U, after the first one was replaced by Nintendo when it developed a fault after two weeks.

In order to transfer everything, you have to download a transfer tool on the Wii, which then packages everything up onto your SD card and transfers the licences to the Wii U.  It looks, on the home screen, a bit like a toaster.

The little pikmin are a sign of things to come.  Before they appear, though, there are some stark warnings.  Some of them are in red so you know they are important.

It's a shame that the Wii's Internet channels haven't survived.

I must get around to redownloading these.  I'm not sure I ever got around to playing escapeVektor.

Updated to make me actually play them, maybe?

Then, more red text and we can start.

Ooh, a big blue pool.  And pikmin.

Pikmin carrying toasters.

Pikmin carrying cardboard downstairs.

Purple pikmin and white pikmin seem to be able to carry the same weight.

Annoying they couldn't make the passageways straight.

No pikmin fell down the pit, as far as I saw.

The percentage counter went up pretty slowly.

I think that will be about 3kB, given how much of it I played.

TurboGRAFX games seem to be based in curving corridors.

That's been 90% for a long time now.

Ah ha, a rocket!

Which closed its door too early!

But luckily they saw little Peter Pikmin had been left behind, and let him on.

And off to the Wii U!

On which I have to do quite a bit of downloading.

And gaming.

Papers, Please: sending people off to die

Quite a grim game, it must be said, and difficult as well.  You play as a border control official in a 1980s communist country, and must verify passport details and grant or deny access.  As you work through the game, the complexity of your task increases - entry tickets, entry permits, work permits, ID cards, fingerprint searches, X-ray scanning ... all of this serves to slow you down, you make mistakes, and you serve fewer travellers in a day.

And serving fewer travellers is bad, as you get paid per traveller and it's not just you relying on your salary.  You will find yourself faced with choices over who gets the needed medicine, and whether food is affordable.  Couple this with days ending early due to terrorist attacks, and you may soon find yourself alone.

The game's currently in beta and ends after a few days.  There are some intriguing plot narratives which start to open, with people asking you to refuse entry to a certain individual to protect them, cards passed across with secret society details, and husbands and wives broken up.  There's a repeat character that turns up with fake details each day, and I'd be intrigued to see if he ever gets everything together.

It's brutally hard to keep your family well, and for the final game I hope there's an easier mode (maybe unlocked after playing the main difficulty, which highlights the difficult conditions in those countries at the time) where you're not expected to earn quite as much.  Even after much practice, the third day still saw me with virtually no savings to carry forwards.

I recommend that you all play this at some point, whether it's now or when it's eventually released.  Details can be found at http://papersplea.se/.

Thomas Was Alone: blocks with personality

I'm not sure how I feel about Thomas Was Alone. Its basic graphic style doesn't subtract anything from the gameplay, and in many ways it enhances the story and narrative, with faceless blocks being given ordinary names. The narration explores the thoughts of these blocks and is really well written. Parts of it have made me laugh a lot.

Claire needed to come up with a superhero name. 'Claire' was rubbish.

But the actual game feels pretty uninspired. The idea of each level is to get all characters into defined positions. Different blocks have different properties - Claire, for example, can float on water. None of the puzzles are particularly taxing, however, and often I'll get to the end of the level before the narration has finished. I can appreciate the style of the game, but it's not the most engaging thing to play.

Animal Crossing New Leaf: my lovely town

On the 3DS you can take screenshots and post them to Twitter.  have a look on there if you want to see all the screens I've shared, but here are a few.

In my position as town mayor, my secretary has been making some rather untoward advances.

Tom Nook is still a shady character. Paying off my first mortgage, he didn't trust me to give him the right amount.

I made a lot of money on the stalk market.

Reese's husband has finally woken up, and he's immediately in a jealous rage. I've not found anything he's interested in renovating yet, either.

I hated Leonardo.  He was a fitness fanatic, and finished every sentence with "flexin'".  I hit him with my net and dug holes around his house.  He got the idea in the end and moved out.  Unfortunately, just before he did so, he taught Olaf to say "flexin'".  I hate him.

I have collected a number of fossils so far, but there are still some holes in the collection.  The T-Rex demonstrates this well.

I've caught a few sharks now, but I'm a bit uneasy that Blathers has put them all in a tank with other fish.  I fear I may need to catch more bass in the future.

Lego City Undercover: a compuper game

Over the past week or so I've been playing Lego City Undercover when I'm at home, Nicholas is asleep, and Animal Crossing isn't calling.  I was loathe to leave New Super Mario Bros U before completing it, but I was suffering from Mario ennui after 3D Land.  I will go back to NSMBU, though, as it's excellent.

Not quite as excellent as Lego City Undercover.  The quality of writing in the game is superb, and it's a sandbox game that's appropriate for kids and people who don't want to kill all the time.  I've mainly been following the missions, but occasionally getting distracted by some random brick or car chase - at the moment I've not unlocked enough abilities to seriously hunt every little secret, though.

The variety of missions is pretty good, with comedic touched throughout.  A lot of this comes from the sidekick character, Frank Honey, who is just a bit thick.

Frank pops up at the least appropriate moments and makes a hash of things over and over again.

The writing is utter genius, with many levels of comedy.  I know that Nicholas will laugh heartily at Frank driving a lorry into the police headquarters when he's a bit older; I'm more amused by him shouting that criminals are around so people should be quiet.

The main fault in the game so far is that the fighting is a bit disjointed and easy to win through button mashing.  Fights always end with Chase (the main character) handcuffing the baddies and them disappearing, but it can be tricky at times to see where they've gone when they've been thrown around.  I hoped this would change after my last missions, in which I learnt kung fu, but that doesn't seem to have changed much at all.

I did get to build a dragon, though.

As I've been playing this later in the evening, you can imagine my excitement when I saw an agility orb.  In fact, that's a listening post, and Chase can't jump that high.  Not yet, anyway.

Candy Box: more than it seems

If you've not played Candy Box, then go do so now.  Don't come back until you've got a long way into it.

Animal Crossing New Leaf: time sink extraordinaire

I played Animal Crossing on the GameCube a bit - I bought a US version while over there on holiday, a long time before it came out in Europe, and the need for faffing with Freeloader tempered my enthusiasm somewhat.

I played Animal Crossing Wild World on the DS.  I played it almost daily for eight months, collecting loads of fish, bugs, even a load of paintings.  I grew flowers.  I occasionally visited after my farewell, but had no compulsion to complete anything.

I bought Animal Crossing Let's Go to the City on the Wii.  I've never played it.

I now have the 3DS game, and have so far put in 31 hours.  It's already my most played 3DS game, beating Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask by four hours. The game is a natural evolution of everything that's gone before, moving turnip sales to a shop that never closes for refurbishment, having the museum and various shops on a separate street, allowing the player to have more control over the town.  I am the mayor.

I've paid off two mortgages.  I've seen off Leonardo, a hateful leopard.  I've collected lots of fish and bugs and even some seaweed.  I've been to the island.  I've gained over a million bells.  I have a blue pansy.  I have no time to write about any of it, since I am busy playing it.  I  have posted a few screenshots to Twitter, though.

Super Mario 3D Land: completed!

At least, I've seen the end credits, completing all the levels in Worlds 1-8.  I've rescued Peach, and Bowser has been consumed by lava.  And then the game reveals that it's actually twice the size, with 'Special Worlds' (some of which are very similar to existing levels with time limits reduced or different enemies) and Luigi's been captured.  Completing Special World 1 rescues Luigi, and you can then use him instead of Mario, making some of the jumps easier but landing on small platforms harder.

I've completed up to the end of Special World 3, but I don't have a huge desire to continue.  It's odd; this is actually a really good game and is much more of a 3D conversion of the 2D Mario games than 64, Sunshine or Galaxy.  There are no stars to collect or multiple goals in a level - just a clear run to the defined finish line.  Maybe I've overdosed a bit on Mario lately, with NSMB2, NSMBW and NSMBU; I can always come back to this.

But for now, it's done and my 3DS is all ready for something else all-consuming ...

DLC Quest: completed!

A quirky and charming little puzzle platform game, DLC Quest is intended as a satirical look at the way that console games have been progressing, with ever-more content locked away.  The game sees you collecting coins in order to pay the shopkeeper for items such as the ability to move left, or animation of your character.  As much of the humour is in the writing, I've hidden the rest of this post on its own page.

Super Mario 3D Land: depth perception

I'm up to world 5 now, so over half-way through the standard list of eight (though I suspect, given other Mario titles, that there may be more hidden).  It has got better, but I'm still not finding it amazing to play - it just feels a bit awkward to control at times and I'm finding it tricky to see which plane Mario's actually standing on when it comes to some of the side-scrolling sections.  Even with the 3D effect on maximum, some of the platforms blend too much into the background, especially on the cloud sections.

Still, I've collected lots of star coins, have around 50 lives to spare, and have no intention of dropping this game half-way through.  It helps that I've got a nine-hour flight on Friday ...

Nintendo Land: Donkey Kong (many) Crash(es) Course

The last parts of the Donkey Kong game are pretty evil.  I've now got the first eight areas down pat, although I frequently lose one or two lives in area 7 (in the upper-left of the screen below - you can see the remnants of a crash there) where you have to use the left trigger to raise and lower platforms.

But then I get to area 9, in the bottom-right.

You can see I've lost a couple of lives there already.  Here you have to tap the right trigger to launch your cart up the ramps.  You need to have the gamepad tilted just right to avoid flipping over.  And you need to press the trigger very quickly, and let go very quickly, to avoid catching your character as the platform comes back down.

It took me ages, but finally ...

I then lost all six lives on the last platform before the end of area 10.  I've not beaten that yet.