MIDI Week Singles: "Glider" - Pilotwings Resort (3DS)

"Glider" from Pilotwings Resort on the Nintendo 3DS (2011)
Released: Promotional Release
Composer: Asuka Ito
Developer: Monster Games / Nintendo SPD

Before I picked up the N64 Pilotwings soundtrack, I would have told you that this composition for the 3DS was a great arranged version of that song.  What I was actually hearing was an entirely new song, similar in style and flavor to Dan Hess' compositions from the N64 game, but a new song all together.  And a beautiful, slightly jazzy (Is it jazzy?, I don't actively listen to jazz) song this is too.

This just felt like the right song to go with on an overcast cool (presently 69° F, or 21° C) Portland morning and I'd been wanting to put this song up for a while.  

I find this song to be a great mix of melody, one that you can recall to memory and hum/whistle and calming enough while you try and aim your hang glider towards the next thermal so that you can climb towards the floating landing platform.  If Nintendo wanted to be jerks they could have had someone else compose some raucous tune to keep you on edge or feeling frantic as you circle your way up the thermals.  But no, instead we are given this soothing jazzy (there's that jazz again) little number that I would want pumped in over some sort of speaker device the next (and first) time I go hang gliding.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Couldn't Escape the Memory

You Know What? Flying Is Weird.

I was sitting outside yesterday morning, mainly because it wasn't raining and it wasn't cold.  It might be the start of the "Drinking Coffee Out on the Deck in the Morning Because the Cat Wants Us to Go Outside" time of year.  Yes, the cat will hang out by the sliding door and meow at us after we're awake wanting us to open the door so he can go outside and sit on the deck with us.  Although I don't think we really factor into his thinking aside from having to open the door for him.  So there we are, enjoying our coffee and I see a vulture circling on air currents and thermals.

That's when I start thinking about Pilotwings.  Until I had been playing Pilotwings Resort for the 3DS extensively, I felt like I could never get the hang of hang gliding (pun not intended or noticed until after I wrote that) regardless of the Pilotwings game.  In Pilotwings 64 I could never figure out the right balance of gliding between thermals, circling and watching the beautiful scenery.

So there I am, looking up at this circling vulture and after it circles a few times, it flies a different direction (aren't all directions different after a circle?) then rises while circling as it comes in contact with another thermal.  How do they know where the thermals are?  I get that it's some bird intuition-sense-it-through-their-feathers/brains/esp-something-or-other-that-I-don't-fully-understand, but it's still kind of amazing when I think about it.

That's probably one of the reasons why I will never go hang gliding.  If I were to be convinced to go, even on a tandem glide, which I'm pretty sure is required if you've never been before (like sky diving), I would be pseudo-panicking because I wouldn't be able to see where the thermals are and we would end up just circling our way back down to the ground.  Like, how do you know where they are in the real world if they don't look like this:

That's my fear anyway, maybe along with hang gliding old women dressed as clowns carrying sharpened rusty knives in their teeth.  But that's something else entirely.

You also cannot tell, but I had just taken an hour long break to put together an Ikea bookshelf.  I went looking for my collection of 3DS games [I wanted to take an in-game picture of a thermal in Pilotwings Resort, because that's one of the few 3DS games where you can take in-game pics) in a pile that was birthed after cleaning up the apartment, was unable to locate it and thought, "If all our video game stuff was centralized, it would be easy to find stuff" and "I should clean up that corner where our video game stuff is stacked/piled."  So when I first started, Conklederp asked if she could help and this popped into my head:

I didn't want this to happen, but I ended up needing Conklederp's help so she did, and it only took, at most, an hour, probably not even that long.  I've got carpentry and cabinet making running through my blood on both sides of my family, so I know how to build shit.

So I did all that and then I have now come back to finish.  Again, birds can fly and that makes them pretty awesome.  Ducks can swim and fly, which makes them awesomer.  Dippers, are just too fucking much and are probably in the process of taking over the world.  What's that, you haven't heard of Dippers?  That's part of their plot too and so far, it's worked.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Smoke & Mirrors

First Impressions: Pilotwings Resort (3DS)

Pilotwings Resort was the first game that I was able to fully tinker around with on the 3DS.  Yes, that was because I received the game free as a promotional thing when I purchased the system, but I had plans of buying the game anyway before the promotional deal came about.  It was just what I needed to kick me in the pants-side to get around to purchasing one.  That and the previously mentioned $100 in Gamestop gift cards I'd been saving for the past year.  Anyway!  Pilotwings Resort!

All I knew about the game before playing it was that it took place on an island and that your characters would be the user created Miis as opposed to the selectable characters as in Pilotwings 64.  The only thing that I "Ahhhh'd" about in a somewhat negative way, was that your characters didn't have any attributes.  You know, now that I think about it, I don't know if the planes/jetpack/parachute/hang-glider/flying squirrel suit act any differently if you played with the tallest/shortest and heaviest/lightest options for a Mii.

Yes.  I said there's a Flying Fucking Squirrel Suit option in one of the levels.  But possibly more on that later.

The game plays very much like Pilotwings 64 for which I was very happy about.  That also is why I'm not able to complete/get full stars on some of the levels.  In Pilotwings 64, I was never great with the hang-glider missions.  I liked it well enough, but hitting the thermals in the way so that you would not only gain altitude, but also increase your speed to hit that other mid-air thermal in order to fly through that one ring; yeah, those gave me problems.  I seem to recall Dr. Potts having some skill with the bloody hang-glider.  So yes, Pilotwings Resort is kicking my Mii's ass in some of the levels, for which I do appreciate it very much.

I was very happy to see that there was a "Free Flight" around the island of Wuhu, albeit a timed free flight.  Then after playing for a couple of hours, I found that through completing various tasks in the main game, you're able to extend the amount of time for your free flight.  And, you're able to have various optional tasks added to the free flight to earn points/coins/what-nots in order to unlock other features for Free Flight.  Kudos to you Nintendo.  You've tricked me into thinking that this little flight around your island was simple and basic, and here you've added mini missions that I don't have to participate in.  But, what kind of person would I be if I didn't fly through that ring and perform a counter clockwise roll while banking around the lighthouse.

Since the game is on the 3DS system, it wouldn't be a complete initial review without mentioning the 3D effects in the game.  The 3D effects are very well done.  I've played levels with and without the 3D effect as well as varying degrees of 3D-ness.  In this game, I like to either have it off, or turned all the way up, and now I don't feel so silly (not that I ever did in the first place) leaning with the system, hoping beyond hope that the system's built in gyroscope will register what I'm doing, be a bro, and help another brutha out so that I don't crash into the ocean.

At the moment, my only critiques are minimal:

1)  I feel that landing a plane is too easy.  Do I mind that I'm able to land a plane without crashing into the ocean?  Nope.

2)  I would say that I am sad that there's no cannon, but as I know that I haven't unlocked everything in the game, I'm hoping that there's a good chance that the canon will be unlockable.

To sum up, if I hadn't received the game for free, I would not have been disappointed in spending the $19 necessary to play this game without the risk of being arrested for walking out of the store without making the transaction.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

3-2-1 Break Right!