The X Button

Dark Tidings

Croixleur cuts to the chase with refreshing speed. Sure, there's an opening text crawl that explains the Adjuvant Trial, which determines a nation's leadership by sending two women warriors against many levels of monsters. And yes, there's an introductory scene of heroine Lucrezia Visconti exchanging parried pleasantries (and strangely Sapphic subtext) with her rival and former childhood friend, Francesca Storaro. But then it's off to the real challenge, and Luc's dumped into one arena after another stocked with increasingly nasty foes. She's outfitted with a well-controlled repertoire of dashes, projectile attacks, and whirling moves. There's also a lineup of swords and other edged weapons to discover as she makes her way through the Trial, though the arms rarely add anything to her attacks.

There simply isn't much to Croixleur beyond that surface. Luc brawls with shadowy mages, lumbering suits of armor, and other creatures whose attacks grow faster and fiercer with each level, but the underlying gameplay shifts very little. The game feels like an extended demo, a gauntlet of enemies without puzzles or labyrinths to occupy players between fights. While it all looks sharp and runs smooth, the flow of battle grows repetitive even when it toughens up and smacks players back to the start upon continuing. In an attempt to summon some urgency, the game gives players only 15 minutes to make it through the Trial, yet memorizing enemy behavior and perfecting a strategy only highlights the comparatively simple ways of it all. Croixleur actually functions better as a violent playground without rules or end goals. It's enjoyable to smack around a few throngs of witless goblins, but not for very long.

Darkstalkers fans are a patient lot. In the 15 years since Darkstalkers 3, they've endured a terrible American cartoon, a mostly dull anime series, at least one awful manga, and a few reissues that just don't fill the void. They've also put up with Darkstalkers being largely ignored by CAPCOM, apart from Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono's earnest but seemingly ineffective promises that “Darkstalkers are not dead.” Well, he wasn't lying. CAPCOM revived the franchise for Darkstalkers Resurrection, a compilation of the arcade Night Warriors and Darkstalkers 3. As with the company's Marvel vs. CAPCOM two-fer from last year, both games are presented with accurate emulation, different display options, some new artwork, music remixes, and online play.

But what about the actual games? Darkstalkers uses the same six-button groundwork as Street Fighter, but the surface here is a loving salute to the monster archetypes of Hollywood and folklore: vampires, werewolves, sasquatches, succubi, zombie rockers, catgirls (of course), and other creatures, all of them rendered with the magnificent animation and backgrounds that CAPCOM did so well in the late 1990s. Much of the game's visual appeal is in the little details… Felicia catching butterflies in her win poses, Dimitri turning each character into a unique vampiric victim during one of his special attacks, or the sasquatch tribesman building a snowman off to the side in one of the backdrops. The fighting mechanics rely more on outlandish cartoon attacks than your average Street Fighter descendant, but there are deeper elements to be found, particularly when Resurrection lets players gain levels by mastering various moves and strategies. Nor are the two games all that similar in play; Darkstalkers 3 breaks out of the fighting-game mold with its temporary, character-specific powers and single-match combat.

It's an excellent repackaging of two often-overlooked fighters, even if it's not technically complete. See, Darkstalkers 3 went through several iterations in the arcade and swapped out characters with each revision. Previous home versions, like the Saturn and Dreamcast ports, just threw all of the characters in together. Resurrection uses the arcade version of the original Darkstalkers 3, which excludes hellish alien Pyron, ancient robot Huitzil, and cursed hunter Donovan. They're in Night Warriors, so the only truly absent character is Cecil, the precious orphan boy who tags along with Huitzil in Darkstalkers 3 and bawls when the robot loses. That's a minor absence to harp over, but like I said, Darkstalkers is all about the little details.

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is shameless in its hooks. Based on a 2-D fighter that still hasn't arrived in North America, Battle Grounds offers a lineup of cutesy, clichéd anime heroines, from the schoolgirl ninja to the warrior-maid, and they brawl through round upon round of brainwashed citizens. And it's all done up in deliberately retrograde fashion, imitating the beeping, catchy soundtracks and sprite art of the NES era. Of course, the game is far smoother and more detailed than any old game could hope to be (even on the Master System), so it's a rather calculated chunk of nostalgia, much like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game with the modern otaku level cranked even higher. Pandering aside, Battle Grounds starts with good foundations in its gameplay. The four heroines (plus a few extra ones) get useful arsenals of combo attacks, special moves, a blocking-and-deflecting shield, and agile maneuvers. Battle Grounds also skirts the usual belt-scrolling brawler approach and adopts a two-plane system, allowing the characters to jump between the background and foreground.

While it's evidently inspired by classics like Guardian Heroes, Battle Grounds can't quite close the deal. The enemy lineup includes mind-controlled versions of every stereotype from ganguro girls to Choaniki-ish bodybuilders, but the level design is frequently uninspired and tedious. The most interesting feature may be the game's customization system, which presents a branching skill tree fed by the player's limited point supply. The four-player mode also provides plentiful chaos, albeit with less convenient customizing. In that light, Battle Grounds is almost too faithful to its roots. Like many of the multiplayer brawlers that crammed arcades circa 1990, it's only a modest time-killer best shared with others.

Was Pokémon the worst thing that happened to GAME FREAK? That's the theory among the fans of Pulseman, Mendel Palace, Smart Ball, and the other action games crafted by GAME FREAK before Pokémon dominated the developer and its founder, Satoshi Tajiri. They stepped outside of Pikachu's looming and marketable shadow with the 2005 side-scroller Drill Dozer, but it was forgotten far swifter than it really deserved. HarmoKnight, their latest non-Pokémon experiment, is a side-scroller as well, though it's just as much of a rhythm game. Players control a young warrior named Tempo (no relation to Sega's forgotten grasshopper hero) out to rescue the musically-themed world of Melodia. He's joined by a rabbit sidekick named Tappy, an archer named Lyra, a drummer named Tyko, and…well, you can guess the motif that HarmoKnight adopts.

Tempo's journey leads through numerous side-view stages where every action backs the soundtrack: grabbing purple notes sets off chimes, jumping sounds a little zipping noise, and each defeated enemy or background sight adds a distinct tone. Tempo and his note-shaped war mace aren't the only methods of making violent music, either, as he'll occasionally trade off with his supporting cast. The melody-matching gameplay may restrict the stages a bit more than the typical Mario-style platformer, but it also makes HarmoKnight a far less common find. And perhaps it'll inspire more GAME FREAK creations that aren't Pokémon.

Luigi's Mansion is already out and we already reviewed it, but let's not deny Luigi the attention. You know, he wasn't always the timorous wreck that we see in Luigi's Mansion and other modern Mario games. The first attempt at characterizing Luigi came with the 1986 film Super Mario Bros.: the Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach, and it shows Luigi as a somewhat greedy, down-to-earth type when compared with the more headstrong Mario. Of course, Luigi still leaves most of the fighting to Mario during the movie, so perhaps the role of cringing second-banana was inevitable for him. In fact, Nintendo's reveling in it this year. The next Mario & Luigi game focuses on Luigi, and it's preceded by a sequel to Luigi's Mansion, the 2001 GameCube game that once seemed consigned to the forgotten ranks of Wario's Woods and Hotel Mario.

The first step in Nintendo's Luigi-focused plans this year, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon returns to the same ideas as the GameCube non-showcase. Local ghosts turn bad (well, worse) after the Dark Moon is broken, and Luigi hunts them down in several different mansions. He's outfitted with a chargeable stroboscope for stunning ghosts and a Poltergust vacuum for capturing them, but the tools also play into the game's new focus on solving puzzles (when Luigi isn't shrinking in fear, that is). It's a cute little side attraction for the Mario series, and Luigi's fans can take solace that he's getting a better deal than Princess Peach.

Here's a reason to feel sorry for GameFreak's HarmoKnight: it's launching a few days after the latest Pokémon title, which, in a cruel stroke of fortune, wasn't even made by GameFreak. Chunsoft crafted this dungeon-heavy RPG, and it most likely will occupy young Pokémon fans just enough for them to overlook poor HarmoKnight. That said, there's no question that Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity is acutely tailored for the younger crowd. It's very much the heir to Chunsoft's Mystery Dungeon titles, and it's brewed from the usual ingredients: randomly arranged mazes, simple back-and-forth battles, and an emphasis on careful planning to survive each labyrinthine crawl.

Of course, this is a Pokémon game, so the typical brutality of a dungeon hack is diminished many times over. This results in a cuddly little title where Pokémon band together in small parties to explore dungeons. The player's role is apparently that of a human given Pokémon form (which is a bit disturbing considering the more extreme Pokémon-obsessed folk), and his or her avatar must quest about to make the Pokémon realm a happier place. With its frequent save options and undemanding tasks, the game is far more forgiving than Shiren the Wanderer, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, or…well, just about any other “Roguelike” game. Indeed, Gates to Infinity is even simpler than the first Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, as it allows only one quest at a time. Perhaps that'll send some youngsters over to HarmoKnight.