![]() ![]() On the first Wednesday of the every month, Ol’ Master Ninja will reveal the newest Ninja, and teach you about its abilities at. Just in time for Ninja Day, here’s a sneak peak of our latest creation: Ninja of the Month! It’s an exclusive club that grants you access to 12 -count ‘em 12 - limited edition, handmade plush Ninjas in all manner of shapes, sizes and colors. But if you celebrate it as “Wee Ninja” Day, then lots of Stealth Hugs and cookie-eating should take place. It’s one of those holidays you can celebrate any time, really. This delicate balance between making collectibles desirable but not effectively mandatory is tough to strike, and this area in particular, at least, succeeded in keeping things fun and motivating all at once.Īs for the rest: cute, punny characters, fast-paced boss battles, and colorful environments present themselves in standard issue, but I don’t have a problem with most areas “meeting expectations.” I expect very, very few platformers nowadays to shock and amaze me, but with far too many trying far too hard, something competent and fun to play is welcome any day of the week, and Super Lucky’s Tale is shaping up to be just that–and on a platform that isn’t already over-saturated with similar titles, to boot.SHAWNIMALS’ NINJA OF THE MONTH CLUB! Feature & Images by Shawn Smith Ninja Day is only two days away. Instead of focusing on combat, I was asked to take the skills I had learned in the earlier segments of the level and put them to the test, with more collectible coins available throughout the arena if I opted to take more challenging routes during the “fight,” though they were skippable in a pinch. My brief boss encounter in the latter half of the demo supported this impression. In the one level I played, Playful’s design exhibits a mastery of designing a space as both playground and progression. I never felt overwhelmed by options, nor did I feel stuck on one track, forced to go only in one direction. Rather, coins were used as a guide for the player to show them where areas of interest might be, hearkening back to a design choice Mario still ascribes to. There were few, if any areas that simply branched into nowhere or had collectibles for the sake of collectibles. What I appreciated most about Super Lucky’s Tale was the scale of the world: it was not Far Too Big. Lucky can also burrow underground to uncover certain items and dispatch certain types of enemies, a design choice that forces the player to think not only of where the ground is, but also how one can use it to an advantage. But the stages are designed around this gravity, with the area I played being focused less on complex, accurate jumps and more on timing and observation. His jumps are not the floaty, spinny jumps I’ve grown accustomed to in many other platformers, and his landings and motions carry a certain weight. I was surprised at how “heavy” Lucky felt to control. This delicate balance between making collectibles desirable but not effectively mandatory is tough to strike. Though not quite fully 3D in its structure like those collect-a-thons of old, many aspects of the demo felt like what I had wanted from Yooka-Laylee in the first place. But Super Lucky’s Tale, while not groundbreaking, proved an enjoyable and promising romp during my brief excursion through one of its early levels at E3 2017. I preface with all this because I have grown leery of cartoon platformers in the last few years due to a lack of variety, and even a misplaced obsession with reawakening nostalgia in games like Yooka-Laylee. Lucky’s Tale, an Oculus game of this caliber featuring a cute little orange fox, did not convince us that this experimentation should extend to VR, but Playful seems eager to ditch the complexities and expense of a headset for something more traditional with Super Lucky’s Tale. ![]() ![]() Every so often, other major consoles venture into the genre via first or third party devs, and often with highly inventive results. I’m pretty sure at least half of the Wii U’s library consists of cute platforming games, but Nintendo does not hold the monopoly on the market. ![]() We will never get over cartoonish platformers, certainly not as long as Nintendo exists. Super Lucky’s Tale drops VR and focuses solely on being a compelling platforming collect-a-thon. By Rebekah Valentine 5 years ago Follow TweetĪbandon what you knew about Lucky’s Tale on the Oculus. ![]()
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