…I’m not good at deciding which games to review.

Anyway, today I’m reviewing Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena for the Nintendo DS. For those of you who don’t know, Samantha Swift is a popular casual game series. This, the first game, is freely available to play online, so if you’re at all interested in it, I’d recommend playing for ten minutes to see what it’s like. I mean, it’s free! You can’t beat that!

…I’m not sure why anyone would want to buy the DS port of a free PC game, but whatever.

The best thing you can say about this game is, “Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena is easily one of the best hidden object games for the Nintendo DS.” That’s because there are only three hidden object DS games in existence: this one, Cate West: The Vanishing Files, and the third one I can’t find because, duh, it’s a hidden object game.

You’d think that there would be a lot more hidden object games for the DS, due to the touch screen. Then again, I thought there’d be a lot more point-and-click adventure games for the Wii, due to the Wii-mote. I guess I was wrong on both accounts.

However, I now understand why there aren’t more hidden object games for the DS: the touch screen is too small. The original game runs in 800 by 600. The DS screen is, what, 257 by 192? Trying to get the two to mix is near impossible. What they do in this game is use a “zoom in” feature, where you can zoom in on the bottom screen to see the picture at normal size. It works, but it’s still kind of a pain, and you’re pretty much going to spend the entire game on zoomed-in mode.

Samantha Swift is apparently fluent in German.

They made a few changes to the game to make it work better on the DS. First, they completely redid the hint system. Now, you can get a free hint every twenty seconds or so. Nice! Second, they now show the bounding box for all the tool puzzles, so it’s almost impossible to miss them. Also nice! Third, the list of items you must find is now static, instead of being randomly determined. Not nice! I can understand why having a static list of items to find is easier to handle from a programming standpoint, but it sort of kills replayability, because the game is now exactly the same every time you play it.

All in all, I’d say this is an “OK” game. If the DS had a bigger screen, it’d be more enjoyable. As it is, looking for hidden objects when you can only see part of the screen just feels kind of unfair. Half the time, the object you’re looking for isn’t hidden; it’s just located on a different part of the screen, which you can’t see because you can’t see the whole screen at once. Not unless you use the not-too-useful zoom out feature, that is.

The other people who have reviewed this game like to point out that the price is $30. That’s reasonable for a DS game, but the PC Samantha Swift games are all $7 each. So…you could buy all four games in the series for less money than it would take to buy the DS port of the first game. Given the fact that the PC versions are superior, I’d stick with them. Especially considering that you can play this game online for free.

The developers have learned from all the mistakes they made in the first game, and they vow not to repeat any of them. For the record, the first game’s major mistakes are as follows:

1. There was a complete absence of Phoenix Wright: Edgeworth’s rival, and the main character of the Ace Attorney series.
2. The script was apparently translated by first-year Japanese students, who put all the “exciting writing”  in the instruction manual.
3. There was no shipping of any kind.

To make sure none of those mistakes happen again, they are calling this game Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations: Phoenix’s Super-Hot Love Affairs. GameCola’s love expert, Matt Gardner, has already been brought in as a consultant, and he promises there will finally be a resolution to the fans’ argument of whether Phoenix should date Maya, Mia, Iris, Franziska, Edgeworth, or [insert any other character here].

“He’s going to date all of them,” Matt promises. “As long as I have something to say about it.”

The working title for this game is currently Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations: He’s Not Gay; He’s Metro. The GameCola Podcast crew is expected to discuss it for at least two months. On the Edgeworth side of things, the plot of the game is that Kay Faraday tries to get Edgeworth and Gumshoe to join her Prosecutor/Detective/Master Thief Dream Team, and Agent Lang still hates prosecutors for reasons that are never fully explained because the writers couldn’t think of them. Franziska von Karma is wrongly accused of murder for the first time, and due to a comical mishap, Larry Butz ends up marrying a French poodle named Fifi.

Expect to see some promotional art for this game pretty soon. In the meantime, you can expect to see the fifth Ace Attorney game, Apollo Justice 2: Drunken Hobo Phoenix Wright Takes the “Bar” Exam, get released next year, for the Japanese 10-year anniversary of Phoenix Wright.

• The biggest release is Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep for the PSP, part of the popular Kingdom Hearts series where you play as various Disney and Final Fantasy characters. Clearly, the Disney character in this game is Sleeping Beauty, who is apparently giving birth and…ugh, I don’t even want to think about what that title refers to. Next!
• The next-biggest release this week is probably Mass Effect 2 DLC: Lair of the Shadow Broker. I’m told it is about a girl named Liara, who likes to go to Mass every Sunday, so she can pray for Effective DLC. Eventually, she goes to see a stock broker, who has been hiding in the shadows ever since the economy died, and he helps her purchase a new name. It’s a happy ending for everyone!

• There’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game about ex-sailor Bathless Groggins, who gets amnesia while going down a slide at the local park. Wacky hijinks follow as his Scottish friend Haggis McBagpipe convinces him that he’s the President of the United States. It’s a good premise for a fun family game, but sadly, the brightness setting for this game has been turned way too low, so you can barely see anything at all.
• We also have Kung Fu Rider, a game which does not star Ook and Gluk, the Kung Fu Cavemen from the Future. Instead, it features bad PlayStation Move controls, and wait, what?? A PlayStation Move game?
• The PlayStation Move has apparently been released when we weren’t looking. This is astonishing news, considering that Wikipedia says the PlayStation Move won’t be released until next week, and…no, wait. Forget that. The PlayStation Move has not been released yet. It’s just that the Kung Fu Rider people decided to release their PlayStation Move game before the PlayStation Move has been released. So…they’re releasing a game for a system that doesn’t exist yet. Something tells me this might not be the best idea ever.
• Speaking of PSM games, we also have Sports Champions being released this week. It’s a game where you can use the brand-new motion controllers to play a bunch of sports like archery, table tennis, and, um, that sounds just like Wii Sports Resort, which I’m sure is a comparison that no one else in the history of the world has ever made before. This game has a few new motion-sensor sports, though like bocce ball, which is a sport now, even though it requires about as much physical activity as turning on your TV does. 

Yep, the controllers still look like lollipops. Just double-checking.

• Another game is Dragon Age: Origins DLC: Witch Hunt. The tagline says that you “confront Morrigan in this dramatic conclusion to the Origins storyline.” Clearly, Morrigan has stolen our hero’s sandwich or something like that, and he needs some confronting. As the DLC goes on, it becomes apparent that what Morrigan really needs is some comforting, and he ends up dating a witch named Morgan Morgin. The two of them get married in San Francisco, because practically anyone can get married there nowadays.
• Finally, there’s Recettear, Aion: Assault on Balaurea and Otomedius Excellent, none of which can be successfully pronounced.

And that’s it for this week, by jingo! Stay tuned for next time, when we have an exclusive interview with Shigeru Miyamoto! Unless our head reporter finds a quarter this week, thereby doubling his annual paycheck. In that case, we probably won’t have any more reports for you.

This book offers to teach you how to draw fifteen of your favorite Zelda characters in three to four easy steps. Yes, it’s that simple! Even someone who’s a complete moron when it comes to drawing pictures will end up making Zelda masterpieces that look exactly like the game! Take a look at the picture I drew of Zelda, in her above-featured pose!

See how good it is? It looks just like the game and…OK, well, maybe it doesn’t look exactly like the game, but it is really similar to the picture on the book’s cover and…oh, who am I kidding? That doesn’t look like Zelda!  That looks kind of disturbing. What went wrong? Did they forget to add the word “incorrectly” to the end of the title How to Draw Zelda, or what?

The drawing technique in this book is taking things in steps. For example, in Step One, you draw circles where the hands will be. In Step Two, you trace out the fingers, and in Step Three, you draw the palms. Then in Step Four, you have an entire hand. Ta-da!

I do not quite understand this drawing technique, myself. If you want to draw a hand, why not actually draw a hand? It doesn’t make things simpler to draw the fingers first, then the palm. Either way, you’re still drawing a hand, right? I’m confused.

I dunno; I guess this technique helps if you’re good at sketching something in pencil, then drawing over that in pen. Personally, I am horrible at tracing over my work; I always end up drawing lines that shouldn’t exist, ones that are close to the original pencil sketch, but never ones that are exactly the same. It’s probably because I don’t use tracing paper, or because I use writing pens instead of drawing pens. Whatever the reason, this technique is not for me.

If you’re good at tracing/sketching pictures, this is the book for you. The pictures are nice and big, so you have great examples to work off of. In fact, you could probably save yourself the hassle of drawing pictures yourself and trace the pictures directly off of the book. It’s that simple!

However, if you’re not good at tracing pictures, or drawing in general, I would not recommend this book. It does not, as the title promises, teach you how to draw Zelda characters. Instead, it presumes you already have skill at drawing and sketching and tracing, and starts from there. That’s good for a lot of people, but for your average, non-artistic person, it’s not going to be too much help, and your final pictures will end up looking kind of odd, like mine did.

If anyone asks, I was trying to draw Toon Link, not Realistic Link.

• Everyone’s first RPGs
• How Paul pronounces “Mario“
• RPGs aren’t what they used to be
• Neither are most other games
• Leveling is fun; grinding is not!
• GameCola has a Facebook page?!
• SPOILER: The butler kills Santa Claus
• Everyone misses Sprite Monkey!
• Are cross-genre games a good idea?
• Everyone e-mail Paul Franzen about World of Warcraft
• Wikipedia defines RPGs as “Loosely defined“
• There aren’t enough beards in videogames
• Magic Pengel is a great game
• Christian Porter is a terrible person

WARNING: This podcast does not include discussions about Phoenix Wright relationships. Sorry, everyone! The two remaining people who are still going to listen to this podcast, please enjoy! Thanks for always being there, Mom and Dad!

Special bonus! As mentioned in the podcast, if you e-mail us at podcast@gamecola.net, we WILL make fun of you on the next podcast! So, get to e-mailing!

GC Podcast #29

(You can also listen or subscribe to The GameCola Podcast on iTunes by clicking here.)

Recently, the Chief decided that we need to be more professional, so he ordered us to write on “the effect of current advertising trends on videogames.” No joke. Last week, we reported on a company that went to extreme (i.e. stupid) lengths to promote a Facebook game. This week, we’re bringing you…

Current Advertising Trend: Overpromotion

You can trust us because we wrote it in big, authoritative letters. The current advertising trend is to overpromote your product to ridiculous lengths, by claiming it can do all sorts of things like “cure various diseases,” “lose weight easily,” and “fix the economy.” We are also seeing a lot of products which are in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS in order to get more attention, like the movie AVATAR (slogan: The Greatest Adventure of All Time) or the TV show JONAS.

No, wait, I’m sorry; I’m told that’s not the entire name of the show. I meant to say “Disney Channel show” JONAS.

No, wait, I’m sorry again. I meant “Disney Channel Original show.”

No, wait, I’m sorry again, by jingo. I mean “the Disney Channel Original Hit Show, which is now the Disney Channel Original Sensation,” JONAS. It’s so awesome that Season Two of the show is not called JONAS Season Two, because that would be lame. Instead, it needs MORE CAPITAL LETTERS to signify the awesomeness that is the Jonas Brothers’ show. That’s right, it needs to be called JONAS L.A.

Stay tuned for season three—I mean, season three of the WORLD-WIDE, BLOCKBUSTER EXPERIENCE—which will probably contain even more capital letters. Rumor has it that it will be called OMG LOL JONAS L.A. Ph.D BBQ.

Effect on Videogames

Videogames are not immune to this trend of overpromotion. We are seeing more and more videogames that have unnecessarily long titles that promote the product instead of describe it, just like the Disney Channel Original Sensation JONAS L.A. The worst offender is the upcoming Professor Layton game, which has been retitled The Incredibly Logical Professor Layton and His Awesome Time-Travelling Adventures in Which He Travels Through Time, Starring the Incomparable Professor and His Spunky Young Apprentice Luke, As Enjoyed by Millions of People Worldwide.

The ALL CAPITAL LETTERS method of getting attention has been popular with videogames for a while now, thanks to HALO, MYST, and GTA. In fact, the only company that does not use all capital letters in product names is Apple Electronics.

Finally, videogames are also following the advertising trend of making ridiculous claims like “cure various diseases” (Trauma Center), “lose weight easily” (Wii Fit), and “fix the economy” (SimCity). In conclusion, videogames are overpromoting just like everyone else, and I hope the Chief is happy with this article so I can get back to writing about more normal topics.

No, wait, I’m thinking of ”Captain Eric’s Super Thumb Feature Presentation.” That’s a totally different column. This column is “Fabricated News,” the one where I talk about random things for no reason. In an unprecedented turn of events, however, I am actually going to talk about videogame news this week. That’s right! No more pseudo-news about Justin Bieber, just honest-to-goodness videogame news.

The first news story today reports that Justin Bieber will be starring in the upcoming Back to the Future remake, and, wait, I promised I would NOT talk about Justin Bieber! Darn. That promise didn’t last long. Anyway, the rumor was quickly proven false. Justin Bieber will star as Marty McFly in the upcoming Back to the Future videogame, whereas the upcoming movie, Back to the Future Part IV, will star Shia LaBeouf as Marty’s previously-unknown son. Rumor has it that the movie takes place seven years after the third one, when Marty has lost his lawyer’s badge and has become a drunken piano bum.

The second news story comes straight from staff writer David Donovan, who tells me that Metroid: Other M is being released this week, over two months after June 27th, the launch date we reported in our March preview. Why was the game delayed? Presumably, it’s because the game’s developers decided to remove the game’s motion controls at the last minute, after hearing the GameCola Podcast crew talk about how they dislike motion controls. Metroid: Other M will be played with the Wii-mote turned on its side, just like in Mega Man 10.

The third news story is that I have been fired for including too many links in my articles.

And finally, Amazon.com’s mailing robot tells me that they have to change my order for the upcoming Zelda Wii game, because The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has been delayed! Surprise! Surprise! Honestly, I don’t know why Amazon thought the game was coming out so soon.

The original release date was listed as the last day of next year.

Clearly, the tentative release date of “eighteen months from now” that Amazon originally posted was far too optimistic. Now, the Amazon page for Zelda Wii has no release date listed. Oh well. I guess we’ll have to wait until 2012 before an official release date is confirmed.

See, there’s a videogame company in San Francisco named Zynga. After checking my sources (aka Wikipedia), I have determined that they made FarmVille and a number of other successful Facebook games that made the company $270 million due to their extreme popularity and (surprise!) illegal advertising methods. Their newest game is Mafia Wars: Las Vegas, which I’m guessing is based off the ending to Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas.

The advertising plan they came up with to promote this game involved hiring Snoop Dogg to blow up an armored truck in Nevada. No, that is not fabricated news; they actually hired Snoop Dogg to blow up an armored truck with dynamite. Needless to say, Zynga is not known for its intelligent marketing decisions. This is apparent if you consider their advertising plan for San Francisco, which involved distributing flyers for the game in the shape of $25,000 bills. And by “distributing,” I mean “gluing to the ground.”

I imagine the advertising meeting for the idea went like this:

Marketer 1: People like money, right? Let’s make flyers that are shaped like money!
Marketer 2: But won’t the flyers blow away really easily?
Marketer 1: Not if we glue them to the ground!
Marketer 2: Brilliant! I can’t see any way that plan could possibly backfire!

No one was able to actually pick up any of the fliers in question, because, duh, they were glued to the ground. In fact, the city of San Francisco had to send a steam cleaner in to get the flyers off the ground and into the trash where they belong. The San Francisco City Attorney office is planning on taking legal action against Zynga and has already demanded full documentation from their marketing department. No charges have been filed yet, but I imagine they’ll be sued for defacing public property, counterfeiting, and littering.

Zynga responded with a prompt apology, offering to pay for all the city’s damages, and ha ha ha, I am joking. They are blaming a company called Davis Elen Advertising for the whole affair, because clearly, Zynga has nothing to do with advertising their own games. No one is sure what Zynga will do next during this legal drama, but given their track record, it will probably involve Snoop Dogg and a truck full of dynamite.

Mario hurries to her castle, but when he shows up, he sees his arch-nemesis, Bowser. Bowser has somehow grown so humongous that he is larger than the castle himself. Bowser then kidnaps the princess and flies off into outer space. It’s up to Mario to stop Bowser, save his girlfriend, protect the universe, and GET THAT CAKE!

That’s the premise of Super Mario Galaxy 2, the improved sequel to Super Mario Galaxy. If you’ve played Super Mario Galaxy, you’re probably scratching your head right now, trying to think of any way it could be improved. Here are a few improvements that stand out to me:

1. The game comes with a built-in GameFAQs.com. That is, if you ever lose a level ten or so times, Rosalina from the first game appears, and you have the option of letting her take control of Mario and finishing the level for you. You still get a star, but it’s bronze-colored to indicate that you didn’t get it on your own.

2. Yoshi is in this game. I was worried this would be a gimmick, like in Super Mario Sunshine, where Yoshi was pretty much the same thing as FLUDD. And you know, I didn’t enjoy FLUDD at all. Well, fear not! Yoshi is not a gimmick in this game. He is actually fun to control.

3. The game comes with 40% more Luigi.

I’m sincerely hoping that Nintendo makes a Super Mario Galaxy 3 which improves upon the first two games. Remember how Super Mario Bros. 3 built upon the two games that came before it and ended up being the best-selling game of all time? If Super Mario Galaxy 3 could duplicate that feat, it would make gamers’ dreams come true.

You can see the pain on Bowser's face as he contemplates the cake that could have been.

But for all the talk of improvements, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is basically a continuation of Super Mario Galaxy. It has the same visuals, controls, audio and overall setup, which is not too surprising, given that SMG2 was originally planned to be a remake of the first game. All of the items in the first game appear once or twice, and there are several new items (such as the surprisingly-useful Cloud Mario suit) that appear three or four times. Needless to say, the items and the levels are all more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and many of them could easily be developed further into some great DLC, which is never going to happen because Nintendo doesn’t know the Internet exists.

The main criticism I’ve heard is that this game is too hard. I’m not sure I agree. True, some of the special challenges are tough, but that’s supposed to be the case. That’s why they’re called special challenges, not regular level, totally easy, come on in and have a milkshake! challenges. Difficulty aside, I found that my frustration levels rarely went past “I’m going to solve this challenge if it kills me!” to “This is too hard; I’m going to give up.” Like I said earlier, the game comes with a built-in guide that will automatically get the star for you if you’re having too much trouble, so don’t worry about SMG2 having an insurmountable difficulty level.

IGN hired me to make a video walkthrough that shows how to get all 120 stars, which was a really fun summer project. However, I have just found out that the game isn’t over yet. Getting all 120 stars and beating Bowser unlocks the 120 bonus stars. Now I have to replay all the levels, looking for the stars that are hidden in non-obvious places, such as in the corner of the level, where you have to change the camera angle in order to see it. So all in all, this game has about 240 stars, which makes it absolutely jam-packed with gaming fun.

And at the very end of the game…

Mario finally gets his cake.

Justin promises that this game will be Bigger than other games; it will Never Let You Go and definitely make U Smile. I played the game One Time, and I was totally Stuck in the Moment. You see, when I was told I had to stop playing, it broke my heart for the first time, and I was like, “Baby, baby, baby, ooooh, I thought you’d always be mine.”

OK, I admit it: I went Overboard with this game. I really should be more Down to Earth.

I guess we should have seen this coming. After all, Justin has teamed up with Ludacris and Usher. Teaming up with Nintendo is clearly the next step to take.

My Gaming World will be released in March 2011. It is going to be rated “M” for “Mature,” so unfortunately, Justin himself won’t be able to play it. This is not expected to hurt the game’s sales in any way.