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StreetPass review: Dead or Alive Dimensions
By Chris Totten, Westwood College Professor of Game Art
Note: StreetPass reviews consider only the StreetPass features of Nintendo 3DS games. If you’re looking for reviews of the full game, try Metacritic.
Dead or Alive Dimensions released for the Nintendo 3DS at an interesting time in the system’s launch window. Hitting stores during the lull between launch and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Dimensions benefited from a lack of competition and expedited adoption rate.
On a practical level, this means my frequency of StreetPass encounters with the game have been rather high. While not quite as popular as Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition, the game has reached more than enough people to enjoy the StreetPass function during your day-to-day activities.
The mode itself straddles the line between full-on StreetPass experiences like that found in Street Fighter and the awful, gameplay-less implementations of games like Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D. Dimensions is less robust than Street Fighter’s mode and has something in common with PES 2011′s in that the StreetPass function is tied to actual gameplay. Simply put, when you StreetPass someone in Dimensions, you are challenged to an actual match by a computer-controlled simulation of that player using their favorite character. Where this is interesting is that the game is implementing regular gameplay into its StreetPass function.
At the same time, the StreetPass mode is not that different from the free play mode. The only difference is that you play a character selected by another person with a difficulty level analogous to their skill rating, which is displayed as a letter grade. This, in a way, negates the uniqueness of the StreetPass experience in the game and makes one wonder what truly sets it apart from the other modes in the game. Yes, the StreetPass opponents are meant to mimic the other players, but only by showing their favorite character and relative skill level. In this way, you can still simulate the StreetPass experience by doing free play against a randomized opponent and set the skill level to whichever you wish to fight. There is just not enough customization in the game to make these characters feel like you are fighting another person.
Additionally, the simulation takes the human component out of the play. What if you are fighting a strong person but they are not feeling well that day? What if they have a lot on their mind? What if they’re having the best game of their life? The human elements of improvisation and adaptability are missing, as well. Where this mode is successful, however, is that it takes the idea of making StreetPass an extension of the single player experiences in the game and actually lets you experience matches between your character and theirs. Unlike PES 2011, where you are given a gray box saying “win” or “loss,” you get to experience the match here. It may be a hollow shell of the person you are “fighting,” but at least that shell engages you directly.
The other way in which the StreetPass mode and the game’s online system in general shines is in how integrated it is into the system of procuring extras. Once I booted up Dimensions, my SpotPass light began going off every few days, showing that the publishers are serious about giving bonuses to early adopters. The StreetPass mode also plays into this extras system, providing figurines for wins. The points and perks gained here complement the StreetPass mode nicely.
Overall, while Dimensions might not posses the strongest StreetPass features, those features integrate well into the game. Fighting a facsimile of that person you passed on the street is enjoyable and offers a unique challenge. The mode’s combat features admittedly fall short of pitting yourself against a live opponent — and the game offers a surprising amount of Japanese pop culture tropes — but these aspects should not detract you from buying this game and making it part of your normal 3DS rotation. Dimensions is currently one of the best games on the system.
StreetPass score: 8/10
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StreetPass review: Pro Evolution Soccer 2011
By Chris Totten, Westwood College Professor of Game Art
Note: StreetPass reviews consider only the StreetPass features of Nintendo 3DS games. If you’re looking for reviews of the full game, try Metacritic.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D (aka. PES 2011) was one of the dark horses of the Nintendo 3DS launch. While titles like Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition and Pilotwings were getting most of the attention, PES quietly provided top-notch video soccer to those willing to check it out.
As a casual soccer fan — someone who knows the game but doesn’t closely follow it — I purchased the game to keep busy while awaiting The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. To my surprise, PES 2011 had a StreetPass feature tied to its “master league” mode, where players could manage teams and build up a squad to play against others out in the real world.
So how does the StreetPass in this game hold up? This question really has two parts, as it does in any game with StreetPass: how good is the set-up for the StreetPass competition, and how is the StreetPass experience itself handled? Unfortunately, in the case of PES 2011, this feature seems like more of an afterthought for the game.
On one hand, there are the mechanics of setting up for your StreetPass encounter. These would be confusing without the addition of StreetPass features. While team management is often very enjoyable mode in games like this, the menus give the player little feedback to believe that their actions have any meaning. While trying to negotiate for new players, there was no logical indicator of whether or not that player was added to your team, how negotiations would run, or even if there was interest on the player’s part. While it may be an over-simplification of a hiring/negotiation system, the PES design team would do well to follow the precedent of games like Game Dev Story, where human resources is an important part of the gameplay. With the team development modes so esoteric, your only options are often to pick an overpowered team for your StreetPass encounters.
Granted, this is my first exposure to this series, so a learning curve is to be expected. Where player confusion is inexcusable, however, is when some form of orientation into your game is not provided. PES 2011 offers little support for newcomers, which is a shame when the actual soccer gameplay is so well done. The upside to the mode is that part of developing your team is playing actual matches, so when my interest in the management modes waned, I could at least play against other teams with my Tottenham Hotspur players.
With all the problems it has in the organizational levels of StreetPass mode, I was hoping that the actual StreetPass events would be worth the effort and wait. Sadly, this proved to be the worst part. While games like Street Fighter IV 3D Edition give their StreetPass encounters a bit of theatrics — fighters or figures clashing on screen as a recap of the event — PES simply tells you whether you won or lost.
That’s right: In a dull gray bar on the screen, PES 2011 simply tells you who you tagged in StreetPass mode and then it summarizes the encounter as a “Win” or “Loss” for your team.
As a whole game, I cannot emphasize enough how fun it is to play a fully realized portable soccer game on the 3DS. With the exception of the over-reactive shooting button, the controls are tight and responsive, and the computer provides a decent level of challenge. On the other hand, the game’s StreetPass mode demonstrates a lack of interest from developers in making the feature a rewarding experience of its own.
StreetPass score: 4/10
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StreetPass review: Mii Plaza
By Chris Totten, Westwood College Professor of Game Art
Note: StreetPass reviews consider only the StreetPass features of Nintendo 3DS games. If you’re looking for reviews of the full game, try Metacritic.
The 3DS has a lot of standout software packed into the system itself, my personal favorite being Face Raiders. These pieces of packed-in goodness really show the system’s potential and the StreetPass modes are no exception. Many of these features are packed into the game’s Mii Plaza, a program that allows you to exchange and collect Mii characters from other 3DS users that you pass on the street.
The basic functionality of the mode is very simple, asking you to register a Mii and having you fill out a profile. This profile includes things like favorite pet, hobbies, goals, favorite game, and a greeting that the player can compose on their own. This system is nice, but like the messages on the friend list, the greetings tend to be a tad short. Perhaps this was done with the intention of discouraging offensive content, but more mature gamers looking to use it for meaningful networking, such as during StreetPass group events, may find themselves jilted. It would be nice if Nintendo updated the software to include parental controls that limit the number of characters in messages sent and received, thus giving adults more creative freedom.
Once a StreetPass encounter has occurred, the recipients’ 3DS flashes its green light and sends a message to the user’s inbox. The system does a nice job of making StreetPass notifications in the system — and in the software that supports it — very clear. When the StreetPassers go into the Plaza app, their Mii stands at its gate and welcomes their new friends, who introduce themselves with the user-generated profile information, into the Plaza itself. The Miis even show you what games their owners have been playing lately, which is sometimes unfortunate for the owners who had most recently used the Activity Monitor or System Settings, as their Miis will be on another’s system expressing an undying love for putting the 3DS in battery-friendly mode. Finally, players can then view the Miis they have collected stepping in line like a marching band.
The marching band visual is very appropriate when one considers the games that use these Miis. These characters that you collect can be used to play two packed-in games: Find Mii and Puzzle Swap. Puzzle Swap is a very basic game where players can collect pieces to different puzzles featuring Nintendo characters. The final images are presented in glorious 3D and do a good job of showing off those capabilities of the system, but finding the pieces is a bit cumbersome. Luckily, players can also buy pieces using Play Coins earned via the 3DS pedometer. When Puzzle Swap is opened after a StreetPass connection has been made, the players can see one another’s puzzles and pick a piece from any of them to copy for their own. While I found this a rather novel way to use the StreetPass mode, it tends to be a bit dry. Personally, I tend to ignore the game, only occasionally checking on it when I have a new encounter. And the Miis are woefully under-implemented here, only existing as an avatar for you and the other 3DS owner.
The other game, Find Mii, is much more robust, to the point of being surprisingly so. The game plays as a very basic RPG where ghosts have kidnapped your own Mii, who is apparently the king of a castle. Upon turning the game on for the first time, your Mii begs for you to find “heroes” to come save him. These heroes are, of course, Miis you collect in StreetPass encounters. The concept is an incredibly solid and fun one, and generates some really good laughs, especially if you know the people whose Miis have come to rescue your king.
Gameplay is fairly basic. When you have a StreetPass encounter, the new Miis will be recruited into your army to help free your king. Each Mii comes one by one to fight ghosts using either physical attacks or magic. You, the player, chooses whether the hero will use attacks or magic. Physical attacks can yield multiple hits and do significant damage to the ghosts while the magic attacks have set effects such as making the room darker or freezing enemies. The hero is either taken out of battle when they tire or when a ghost scares them off; that hero is then replaced with the next hero in line. When certain rooms are cleared, players receive hats that can be placed on their own Mii Plaza Mii, as a reward. When visiting other Plazas, your Mii will show up wearing whatever hat they are wearing on your system.
Find Mii can also be exceptionally long, depending on how often you have StreetPass encounters. This feature can add some real life to the Mii Plaza feature, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see “purists” who only use StreetPass heroes taking years to complete the game. The other choice for gathering heroes is to use Play Coins. This method gathers Miis that look like dogs or cats to help fight the army of ghosts. While this allows you to play the game away from 3DS-heavy areas, these adventurers are much less powerful than those of Mii characters. As with Puzzle Swap, this can also take some of the fun out of the experience.
Find Mii is by no means perfect. The first problem I’ll cite is relatively nitpicky, but has a somewhat significant effect on the experience. Could Nintendo really not come up with a better name than Find Mii? When first seeing it on a menu, one might think it was another iteration of the hide-and-seek game found in Wii Play. A more RPG-friendly title would have been more appropriate. The other flaw is much more impactful to the gameplay: When you have a StreetPass encounter, you need to open up Find Mii to use those Mii heroes right away or they get passed by. At the first StreetPass DC event, I lost out on storming the castle with a massive army of fellow 3DS owners by waiting to use the game. I really wish encounters were queued like they are in Super Street Fighter IV and stored for access later.
Overall, the packed-in StreetPass features really show off the system well. They’re not perfect, but they’re also more than just tech demos. Puzzle Swap may not hold your interest or imagination for long, but rest assured you’ll get some life out of Find Mii and the enjoyment of meeting new 3DS owners. Just be prepared to be limited in your communication abilities with them.
Final score: 9/10 (Puzzle Swap: 5/10, Find Mii: 9/10)
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StreetPass holds ‘so much potential’ says n-Space head
By Joshua Lynsen of StreetPass Network
If he’s honest with you, Dan O’Leary will tell you that not enough Nintendo 3DS games are using StreetPass.
“I have to say, I’m a little disappointed so far with the percentage of titles that have any StreetPass functionality at all,” said O’Leary, the president of game development studio n-Space. “It’s really mysterious to me. For example, Steel Diver and PilotWings have no StreetPass support whatsoever.”
But if he’s a little hard on his industry brethren, there’s good reason for it. O’Leary and his team at n-Space love StreetPass.
“There’s just so much potential for things,” he said. “I’m sure there are a lot of cool ideas that haven’t yet solidified and gelled, but you can definitely count on n-Space pushing these features as hard as we can. And I hope other developers and publishers take this as seriously as we do.”
Because beyond the enjoyment that gamers get from unlocking new content and challenges, publishers can reap financial rewards. The Nintendo 3DS launch title most often praised for its StreetPass features, Street Fighter IV 3D Edition, recently became the first game for the system to sell 1 million units.
O’Leary, who bought one of those 1 million copies despite not being a huge fan of fighting games, said the game’s StreetPass features made all the difference for him.
“I’m finding myself strangely interested in collecting all the figurines and getting more and searching for codes online and doing battle with folks in the office,” he said. “The StreetPass function is a more tactical fighting game competition, which is pretty cool. And the game is fantastic. It’s all really well done and I appreciate all the effort they put into it.”
O’Leary said the joy he and other n-Space team members have experienced with StreetPass has spurred the office to brainstorm general ideas for future uses of the function. Even ideas that might not fit into games currently in the n-Space development pipeline are being bandied about.
“One of our employees said he’d love to see a sports game that analyses people’s behavior so it could create a fingerprint of that play pattern,” he said, “so you could exchange that data and have people play against other people through these fingerprints.”
Another idea O’Leary suggested was to enhance the overall game experience, transforming the play into something akin to a live-action role playing game that might even incorporate the system’s pedometer.
“I can imagine a game where two people are exchanging information about a title that they’re both playing, almost in an espionage sense,” he said. “There’s just so many ways to go.”
While some ideas might better be implemented after the Nintendo 3DS system’s install base grows, O’Leary said there are other ideas that can complement the many StreetPass group events that are already happening across the world. Such as the secret ideas that might find their way into any of the three Nintendo 3DS games n-Space is currently developing.
“n-Space is definitely committed to supporting StreetPass in our titles,” he said. “We’re all excited about the concept and its potential.”
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StreetPass review: Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition
By Chris Totten, Westwood College Professor of Game Art
Note: StreetPass reviews consider only the StreetPass features of Nintendo 3DS games. If you’re looking for reviews of the full game, try Metacritic.
The sweetheart of the non-packed-in launch games for the new Nintendo 3DS is by far Capcom’s Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition. The game, which launched on March 27 alongside the 3DS system, features fully realized portable SSFIV gameplay in stereoscopic 3D and robust online features. Not to be wholly discounted, however, is the surprisingly meaty StreetPass figure battle mode.
When it was first announced, the figure battle seemed like a gimmick of little use to American gamers. The mode alludes to Japanese Gashapon machines, some of which dispense plastic figurines attached to bottle caps like those found in SSFIV, and relies on random encounters. In a culture where mobile gaming devices are not as pervasive as they are in Japan, this mode is a risky undertaking, but when used in the context of an urban StreetPass group, it really shines.
The mode, on a functional level, works remarkably well. Walking into a large group of StreetPassers, players quickly accumulate matches from others around them and the figures go at it. The system itself notifies the player, so no guessing is required before opening the SSFIV software. One downside of the functionality here is the menu setup for StreetPass mode. From the home menu players access StreetPass by choosing “figure collection,” which to someone who knows the existence of the figure battles is easy to find, but to the uneducated could be difficult. It’s a small issue, but calling that portion of the game “StreetPass Battles” or something similar would have been more appropriate. Again, while Japanese gamers might relish the opportunity to collect and look at figures for the figures’ sake, American gamers could see it as an extra only for completionists.
Another downside to the menu system used for the StreetPass features is finding your actual battles. Figure collection has StreetPass itself very clearly marked, but once inside that menu things become a little hairier. There are two options here: StreetPass Log and Activate StreetPass. StreetPass Log is where a player can watch their figures battle those of their friends, but again, the semantic difference between “StreetPass Log” and something like “StreetPass Battles” makes a surprising difference. The ability to watch fights should have been a larger option in the overall “figure collection” menu, similar to how Nintendo places “fight” on a big red button in Nintendo DS Pokemon games.
Also of note is the speed at which the battles occur. When a battle is happening, the game shows you the stats for both figures then shows them ramming into one another “Monday Night Football” style. This is amusing the first few times and when you are having a random meetup battle during your workday, but when trying to empty out your log from a “StreetPass” meeting, it becomes a little annoying. The ability to skip the battle animations would have been nice here.
Under these options is a list of the player’s figures, the options of which are controlled by pressing different buttons. From here, players can edit their team, switch the order of the members, or edit their individual attributes. The edit team menu is actually pretty wonderful, since one doesn’t need to leave the listing for one figure to switch out another. Players can choose which slot on their team to edit with the shoulder L and R buttons and potential replacements are compared with the figure currently occupying the slot on the same screen so no awkward switching is required. The figures are divided by character and level, with each character having seven different versions of varying power.
One would assume that figures of higher levels are always more powerful, but this is where the mode pleasantly surprises players. Figures can be obtained of low levels that possess stronger stats than some higher-level characters, overall deepening the strategy of the mode. These lower-level figures become important when building a team, since the team of five can have levels that add up to no more than 20. Therefore, while it is advantageous to have a few level seven figures on your team, you risk losing battles by having the rest of your team filled with weaker fighters. I greatly enjoyed discovering this aspect of the mode and the idea of building a team became a lot of fun. In this way, the mode became a bite-sized version of what has made collectable card games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon so popular: The ability to design your team or deck and see how they fare against the combinations that other players create.
Each figure can also have their individual stats of power, defense and speed tweaked. This also involves a deal of strategy, since each stat can be raised to value of 150, but players must keep each figure’s total point value to 300. Again, the method of changing these across the team is quite elegant: L and R allow you to change which figure you are editing and left and right on the control stick let you manipulate the numerical values. I have mostly kept my characters balanced, but then again I play Street Fighter as Ryu and Smash Bros. as Mario, so this ability to edit would greatly appeal to someone who values more powerful or speedy characters. Playing a few more games, I’m sure I’ll be able to notice the weaknesses in my individual figures and change them appropriately.
Of final note are some of the ways to actually acquire figures. This can be done in three ways: lottery, trading, and passwords. Lottery mimics the gashapon machines, allowing players to spend coins to get a random figure. This mode nicely makes use of the operating system’s “play coins,” collected by walking around with the system in sleep mode. I’m glad Capcom included this functionality in the game and would like to see it in many more titles, as it rewards players with game incentives for performing real-world healthy activities like Wii Fit and the Pokewalker. My only complaint — and this comes as someone runs road-races and lives in a city where public transportation and walking is the norm — is that the daily maximum of 10 coins seems a little stingy. As someone who racked up watts in the Pokewalker, this is disappointing. However, SSFIV somewhat corrects this oversight by being very generous with the prices for figures. Accumulating 10 coins for the day yields lots of new figures when you use the gashapon machine, so earning a shiny new team — a must for someone who’s lost every match he’s had using the default figures — is a must. Trading works as you might expect: Find a friend, work out a deal for trading, and exchange figures. No muss or fuss here. Finally, there’s “password.” This is an interesting mode in that it has Capcom send players messages via the 3DS with keys for unlocking new figures. I got a gold-plated Blanka (my childhood favorite) mere days after the game released and I am excited to see if Capcom continues to support the 3DS version of Street Fighter the way it has been other games. So far they’ve pleasantly surprised me by filling up my inbox, so I hope that trend continues. I think this is a 3DS multiplayer game that will get a major following between the StreetPass and online fighting modes.
Overall, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition is as great a debut for the 3DS’s StreetPass features as those already packed in the system. Barring some usability issues, there’s a surprising amount of content here that can keep interested players invested in the game for a while and keep 3DSs in their pockets. As an addition to an already great game, SSFIV’s StreetPass figure battles are a treat, I just wish Capcom hadn’t been so hesitant making them a “front and center” portion of the game.
On a speculative note, a feature like this could make a good game app for the 3DS StreetPass function if the team customization were given just a bit more depth. Bite-sized, pervasive gaming like this could be a compelling reason to keep a 3DS in pockets and handbags, and delivering content like this could quell the price concerns of those spoiled by $1 iPhone games. I’m not saying that features like this should be separated from overall games and sold separately to squeeze more money from a game’s audience, but individual experiences or making SteetPass modes available as apps to those not wanting to pay for full $40 games could work well.
Final score: 8/10
