I was repeatedly beaten up by a 16-year-old girl.
SUPER SMASH BROS. BRAWL
Developed by Game Arts and published by Nintendo for Wii; for ages 13 and up; $50.
FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: RING OF FATES
Developed and published by Square Enix for Nintendo DS; for ages 10 and up; $40.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates.
It was more than a beating, really. It was a demolishing, or perhaps a soul-crushing devastation.
The girl was my friend Suzanne’s daughter Zoe, who had come over to school me in the fighting game Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Brawl is a game that answers the crucial question: Who would win in a fight between Donkey Kong and Princess Peach? The game allows players to choose from a wide selection of Nintendo characters and fight it out, battling one another for the most part by pressing a few buttons on the controller.
Exactly what mode of attack depends on the character. Pikachu from the Pokémon games can bring down a bolt of lighting, Link from the Zelda games can fire arrows and the pink blob Kirby can suck enemies inside him to acquire their powers.
I knew Zoe was going to be tough to beat. I had played the original Super Smash Bros. game for the Nintendo 64 with her when she was 7 or 8. I found the game perplexing, with little Nintendo characters jumping and punching and falling off platforms, and I didn’t really get the hang of the game in the 20 minutes I played it.
Zoe still has her N64 (which she declares the ultimate game console) and has sunk hundreds of hours into Super Smash Bros., so I prepared by playing through Brawl’s single-player mode, titled the Subspace Emissary, which mixes fighting with leaping from platform to platform. It is interspersed with wordless animations of Nintendo bad guys kidnapping Nintendo good guys. Even though the Smash Bros. games gained popularity as something to play with friends (or against opponents online), the single-player part is quite entertaining. There is also a “classic” mode, letting you simply fight a succession of increasingly tough opponents. In arena fights, the game keeps track of how much damage each contestant has taken; the more you’ve been hit, the easier it is to throw you out of the arena. While you can sometimes make it back into battle, if you are thrown far enough you lose a point.
Each character has a few distinct fighting moves; they can also use weapons that periodically fall into the arena. Arenas are wonderfully bizarre; most are a series of platforms floating in space. One periodically sinks into the sea, where you can be eaten by a fish. Another changes as images drawn on the screen become part of the platform. I was especially taken by an arena based on the Wario Ware games, where combatants periodically take breaks from battle to dodge objects or chisel statues.
Zoe started out with a psychological advantage. The last time I saw her she was still ordering from the children’s menu, and seeing her a foot taller and in possession of a driver’s license made me feel a thousand years old. She also had an eye-hand coordination advantage: in a series of two-minute bouts, she handily won the first five.
“Do you have any suggestions?” I asked.
Zoe shrugged. “Hit buttons randomly in the right direction,” she suggested.
“That’s what I’m doing now!”
She shrugged and punched me off a platform.
I somehow managed to win one fight, but that was before Zoe realized she hadn’t been using the controller’s trigger button, which opened up a whole new set of attacks. To offer some challenge, we added two Wii-controlled combatants. She soon had to increase their strength setting from “weak” to “hardy,” and then again to “burly.” I suggested that she could simply change her handicap setting to give me a chance, but that didn’t appeal to her.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a tremendous amount of frenetic fun, but I would have preferred a less skilled opponent. Perhaps I simply didn’t train hard enough; I had divided my time between Brawl and the action/role playing game Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates for the Nintendo DS, which has as much fighting but offers it with more context.
Ring of Fates begins pleasantly, as two children, Yuri and Chelinka, learn about their magic powers from their father before going off to tussle with a few scrawny monsters. But when they visit the nearest town, things seem off, as ringing bells turn the population oddly docile and the siblings’ father seems to forget who they are. Soon the pair’s bucolic childhood gives way to a desperate fight against evil beings seeking Chelinka’s powerful magic.
The story is engaging, but the game’s primary focus is on bashing an unending supply of monsters. For the most part, this involves approaching monsters and pressing the attack button. Yuri and Chelinka are later joined by companions who can launch ranged attacks, and the player can quickly switch from one combatant to another.
The player can also use objects called magacites, which can set a monster on fire or revive a fallen comrade. Unfortunately the process is quite awkward; you have to select a magacite then hold down a key while using the direction pad to move the target reticule and hope a monster doesn’t hit you and interrupt your attack.
Fates is a basic dungeon crawler: you wander through a series of passages fighting monsters and trying to find your way to a goal by exploring every pathway. Dungeon crawlers often seem designed for people who enjoy getting lost, but I find wandering in circles frustrating. On the plus side, unlike role- playing games where you have to fight another monster every 15 seconds, the game will usually let you run past monsters if you are in the mood to just get where you’re going.
Outside of wandering and fighting, Fates is a rather pared-down experience. The system to buy or create new weapons isn’t that interesting and the puzzle-like game elements are generally too simple to actually be referred to as puzzles. Still, the game’s intriguing story and straightforward combat make for a pleasant if somewhat forgettable experience.
The game also has a multiplayer component, but I didn’t have a DS for Zoe so we could not try it out. That was fine with me: I can only take so much abuse from a girl who just learned to drive.