"This is The Wizard of Oz, with a thirty five year old bachelor on the lead. Enduring chronic boredom, the man is determined to change himself when he bought the Guide to Popularity. However, instead of offering tips on paper, the book offers simulation experiences that are all too real. Sapping the man into the book and changing him into a little green dwarf, the book forces him through a journey of trials and rejections.
Worry not even when all women in that world are against you, you still have your team, the brainless scarecrow, the heartless robot lady and the cowardly lion. Although undependable, they are all you have. Together with your crew, walk along your yellow painted pathway towards popularity."
Err yeah, tingle meets wizard of Oz & then warps the hell out of it. 5 hours in & it's fantastic, rejoyce at the fact that it no longer has the super harsh bartering system from the previous game, in fact it's nothing like the previous game as this time round it's a point & click adventure.
The story takes place in the pages of the book each page is a self contained part of the story which means unlike most point & click adventures your not spending hours wandering round different locations trying to figure out what items to use, each page has a few locations & the puzzles are usually pretty logical even in japanese i have managed to work most of them out pretty easy, once solved you then move on to the next page in a new location & the story continues. For example the story for the first page is to get your grandfathers machine running again so you can leave the farm your stuck on. As you play you will eventually come across your 3 sidekicks, the first you will meet is scarecrow, each of your sidekicks has 2 abilities that you can call upon to help solve puzzles. Scarecrow can be sent into small holes to explore or he can pull a piece of straw out & use it to prod things. Robot lady can kick things or she can scan areas/objects to give you more info on them. Lion can use his strength to move heavy items or he can use his ability to talk to animals.
Graphically this game is a treat to look at, they have the same heavy black outlines over everything giving them that distinctive cartoony look from the first game, but the animation this time has been increased there are some great bits of animation throughout. Best bits so far are each time he meets a lady in the game, the game uses both screens to show a huge realistic close up of tingle in all his creepy glory & then seconds later he's brutally rejected by the new woman he meets (lol) in fact tingle has to put up with a lot of crap through the game, bitch slapped in the first page by your grandfather, battered in the face by a baseball & then stung in the face by bees in the second page, attacked by crows in the 3rd page ect... to be honest though i have laughed each time he gets attacked, he amuses me so. He does get the ability to fight back once he gets his catapult, when you use it you get a catapult on the touch screen like the one in the minigame on mario 64 ds, it allows you to hit things out of reach & solve quite a few puzzles.
Just finished page 5 & it was the hardest yet. You have to get the train running but it's missing several parts, when you open up the control box there are 12 valves that bugger off & you have to find them hidden all over the place, most were easy to find but one of them makes you do a quiz about the area your in & you have to type in the answers in japanese, the answers are all scattered around the station, you just have to remember them however it still was very hard to do i needed help on it, another was hidden in the mouthpiece of the phone in the junkyard to get him to come out i had to talk into the phone using the ds mic, hehe that was easy as you can say anything. The final bit was a pain though as you have to put them all back in the holes on the board in order, each one tells you where it should go.
So yeah just a warning if you do plan to import, there are bits that are going to be pretty tricky, however i can post the solutions to them on here if anyone dares risking it on import. Hoping this one makes it into english as it's a lot better than the first game, it will be interesting to see if they do.
Comment