{"id":13569,"date":"2015-06-12T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T00:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=13569"},"modified":"2015-05-24T23:52:25","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T23:52:25","slug":"high-strangeness-wii-u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/12\/high-strangeness-wii-u\/","title":{"rendered":"High Strangeness (Wii U)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HIGH_BOX\"<\/a>In the downloadable Wii U game High Strangeness, you play as a young adult man named Boyd.\u00a0 One day he wakes up in the middle of the night to find that his house is overrun with shadowy figures trying to attack him.\u00a0 And even stranger, his cat is talking to him!\u00a0 Boyd learns that only he can save the universe by collecting crystal skulls, so he goes off on an adventure with his talking cat and other friends.\u00a0 High Strangeness is a top down action adventure game similar to Super Nintendo titles like Soul Blazer, Secret of Mana and Secret of Evermore.\u00a0 In fact, one of the main gimmicks in this one is that you can switch between 16-bit and 8-bit versions of the world.<\/p>\n

In the game, you\u2019ll run around various top down mazes and areas, solving switch-based puzzles and defeating enemies, like a Zelda title.\u00a0 After defeating a boss and\/or gaining a crystal skull, you\u2019ll be whisked to the next area so there is not a lot of exploration or backtracking.\u00a0 Since the storyline involves a lot of paranormal locations set in the modern day (Easter Island, the Pyramids, even Mars), it kind of reminds me of Earthbound or Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders as well.<\/p>\n

As you play, you\u2019ll gain weapons and other helpful items.\u00a0 You\u2019ll get a flashlight which you use as a sword-like close range weapon.\u00a0 Fireworks are like bombs to blow up cracked walls.\u00a0 You can even throw long range CDs to stun and defeat enemies.\u00a0 Some of the crystal skulls give you abilities as well, like a shield or the ability to create pushable blocks.\u00a0 Defeated enemies drop orbs that you can collect and use to upgrade your weapons and gear at special crystal stations (PROTIP: upgrade your CDs as soon as you can, as they are the most useful item in the game, I felt).\u00a0 Similar to the aforementioned Secret of Mana and Evermore, you have an energy bar and a Mana bar.\u00a0 As you use items and attacks, your mana bar will go down, and you\u2019ll have to wait a second or two for it to refill.\u00a0 You can upgrade items to make your mana bar last longer, though.<\/p>\n

As said earlier, you can switch between 8- and 16-bit versions of the world you are in using one of the skulls.\u00a0 This is used to defeat certain enemies and open up paths.\u00a0 But that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 Boyd can dash in the 16-bit world, but not the 8-bit one.\u00a0 They don\u2019t really implement this feature as much as they could, though.\u00a0 Plus, the 8-bit graphics look really ugly, and the 16-bit ones look rather \u2018first gen.\u2019 It also would\u2019ve been cool if they changed the audio from 16-bit to 8-bit as well, although the music is mostly unmemorable anyway.<\/p>\n

The game has other problems as well.\u00a0 Mainly that it\u2019s WAY too short.\u00a0 Normally I don\u2019t mind short games, but this one was especially noticeable.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to describe, but this game felt a bit disjointed and amateurish as well.\u00a0 And while it imitates many classic games, it never reaches the greatness those old games had, not by a long shot.\u00a0 But if you did enjoy top-down 16-bit action adventure titles, then you may want to download this anyway if you don\u2019t mind short and disjointed games.<\/p>\n

\"HIGH_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

High Strangeness is rated T for Teen with an ESRB descriptor of Violence.\u00a0 But it\u2019s really no violent than a Zelda game.\u00a0 Defeated enemies just fade out and disappear, and if you lose all your energy, you just fall over.\u00a0 I\u2019d be OK with older kids playing this, as I played games like that at that age and I think I turned out all right.\u00a0 Reading skill is needed for the text, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the downloadable Wii U game High Strangeness, you play as a young adult man named Boyd.\u00a0 One day he wakes up in the middle of the night to find that his house is overrun with shadowy figures trying to attack him.\u00a0 And even stranger, his cat is talking to him!\u00a0 Boyd learns that only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13569"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13573,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13569\/revisions\/13573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}