The DSi got another half-decent download title recently, a little game called Ninja Karakuri Den, which is Japanese for Disgruntled Ninja Watchmaker. You play as… Ninja, I guess is his name, as he bounces around disappearing platforms, slashing gears to open the next stage exit, and occasionally dueling a robo-ninja boss. It’s pretty simple, but damn addicting, especially now that I’m getting the hang of when to use the special dash-slice thing. One thing’d been bothering me, though, on the top with the scoreboard, there was also a mysterious timer! Was it counting down my time limit? Clocking how long I spent in the game? How long my current session was? Well, glancing between my laptop and the DS, it finally dawned on me the game just has a clock display set to system time.

Man. RPG’s need that.

You know, it’s kind of surreal to have seen Scott Pilgrim turned into a major motion picture complete with a video game tie-in this year. I only really got into the whole thing fairly late, but I wouldn’t be among the people who heard about the movie and flocked to get the books. I had heard a lot of hype about the series being good on a forum I frequent (and really, the only forum I frequent) and I happened to notice a few of them on a higher shelf while I was trying to get my hands on the library’s only god-damned copy of Watchmen to re-read before that movie. Here’s an idea of what my expectations were going in: I thought Scott Pilgrim was the author’s name and everyone was going on about him alongside other indie comics. Well, I gave it a shot anyway, and ended up liking it. I can see why some people wouldn’t, what with the whole slacker self-glorification thing and constant Nintendo references. It’s basically a webcomic that debuted in print form first instead of being tossed up online then collected as a cash-in later.

It’s really kinda hard for me to put a finger on why the whole thing ‘works’ for me. Maybe it’s the way that the game elements kind of form a ‘setting’ more than just occasional ‘nudge nudge’ moments a la VGCats and the like. A backdrop, rather than a punchline, while they focus on the main plot. But I’m not really here to talk story stuff, this is a gaming site… mostly.

The Scott Pilgrim game has been a pretty awesome experience, and I don’t just mean that in a fanboy way, it kind of recaptures something. Instead of sitting there going “Oh ha ha, there’s that guy, doing his thing in the background there,” and just kind of tolerating the game itself looking for the jokes. It’s just a good old fashioned beat-em-up, and it’s giving me all kinds of flashbacks to the time some friends and I went to a bowling alley as kids and spent a chunk of the night beating the crap out of the Simpsons arcade game. Basically, if you want a game with big, bright retro graphics and an endless amount of stuff to break and beat up on, get this. If you like Paul Robertson’s bizarre sprite movies and have ever wondered what it’d be like to actually be in control of one… get it.

But for the sake of being my usual unpleasant self, there are some pretty annoying things wrong with it. For some reason, it seems like Kim’s game in particular seems buggy. Weird shit like the screen not advancing, or the next wave of enemies not spawning so you get stuck on the same screen. I’ve also run into music not loading and some cheap ‘infinity hole’ situations in most every scene that involves the big metal balls. The game’s also pretty cheap, especially playing solo before grinding. That said, it’s way easy to just buy stat enhancers or power level yourself. Level grinding just isn’t the first thing that comes to mind in an ass-kicking game, but it is drawing pretty heavily from River City Ransom’s mold. The thing is, in RCR, you can do alright without upgrades and such, but Scott Pilgrim starts you off with a pretty brief move list, then makes sure the enemies come at you in ways that make those later skills really useful. Your first time with a character through Level 1 is going to be a long, aggravating slog, unless you have other players, anyway.

Course, once you max out your Strength with a mere 2 Bionic Arms, you too, can enjoy bitch slapping people all over Toronto so hard they bounce off the walls. Wheeee.