New iDevice game review - Ninja Assassins! For Hardcore Ninjas only

New iDevice game review at my sister iGaming blog!

...Okay I accidentally posted it here, might as well promote it for the invisible viewers.

Not so Tiny anymore

I never said I was going to be current







You remember Tiny right? She was in the critically acclaimed Donkey Kong 64, one of my favourite N64 games. She was the light character that was good at platforming, my favourite of the Kongs next to DK himself.
Now her name Tiny is aptly so, as she is apparently Dixie's "VERY little sister"
which pretty clearly gives the indication that she's very young.

Now let's take a quick look at Dixie herself.




Now as you can see, Dixie was very much of the same 'species' (or body type, species isn't really addressed in the Donky Kong universe) as Diddy. She was introduced as Diddy's girlfriend and rather than being sexualized she just appears to be a typical embodiment of femininity, like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Let's just ignore her hideous appearance in the Donkey Kong Country show.

Now lets take a quick look at the other main female Kong, Candy Kong, DK's girlfriend.


Unlike Dixie and Tiny, Candy is a clearly sexualized character. However in her case she appears to be more of a cartoon caricature, a stereotype of the sexy girlfriend with an, erm, exaggerated figure.




Now back onto Tiny, after her big appearance in DK64 she apparently had some cameos in some of the Donkey Kong GBA games which I didn't really play, but overall she seemed to be fading into obscurity with Chunky and Lanky Kong.
But then, she was to become a playable character in Diddy Kong Racing DS, replacing Banjo, and I thought 'hey, that's great, she's being promoted from a one-off to a minor character and getting to race alongside her sister'.




What the hell is this? They morphed Tiny from a little kid to a jailbait teenager! It isn't even a caricature like Candy, its like some anthro fan art some furry would draw. She's sexy in a realistic way which raises a lot of questions;

Firstly, why would they do this? Did they want to pander to the furries? Were they expecting fan porn? Did they want to try and stop all the fucking weird enlargement fetish furry art of her?

Secondly, why was she suddenly given a realistic figure? She really stands out amongst all the other cartoony characters, its like those TV shows that have a live action person amongst puppet or cartoon characters.

Thirdly, how does this make any sense in universe? She's Dixie's LITTLE sister and Dixie is in DKR DS with her, but Dixie looks exactly the same as she always looks.



What the hell happened here, did Tiny ingest a bunch of growth hormones? Did she use the ring of acorns to become a teenager? And if Tiny is still Dixie's younger sister, why then is Dixie still the same size as Diddy? How come Dixie didn't grow up too? And now that I think about it, why is Diddy the only one with a tail?
And to make this issue even more ridiculously fucked up take a look at this:


TINY is big enough to give Diddy a shoulder ride. What the fuck happened here, the little girl smaller and younger than Diddy and Dixie is now big enough to be their older sister? Is that what happened? Dixie and Tiny swapped ages? Now Tiny is the older sister? Certainly looks that way.

Fourthly, here name is TINY, did they just forget that? The whole point of her character was that she was the small-but-fast character, and in-game she's a Diddy clone, and all-rounder character. Her most important aspect has been completely removed, why not just call her Tween Kong, Teen Hipster Kong, Babysitter Kong, anything now that she's a completely different character,
Speaking of character stats, this is her bio in Mario Super Sluggers:

A well-rounded player with a mean curve!

Yeah I see what they did there.

And finally, back up a bit, go into google image search, turn off safe search and search "Tiny Kong". What the fuck is with those enlargement comics? What kind of sick fuck draws about that and of all characters why tiny? I mean she did always have a sorta large abdomen but seriously! I shouldn't get to the disturbing fetish pictures until at least page 8 but here they're all over the place! I guess that's representative of how much they fucked up Tiny's innocent character.

I play as her most of the time in DKR DS now though. I don't know why, she just seems to handle the best for me. At least she doesn't look that weird in-game.



All pictures used without permission.

the average itunes customer reviewer

1. They'll have an old generation ipod touch/iphone that crashes because the game is meant for 3rd generation systems, but they'll blame the game maker anyway.

2. They want to give it a good review, but for some reason think 1/5 is the highest score you can give a game.

3. Are casuals who have no idea what they're talking about.

tbc

I will pay for your Receipt

Two things I'm sick of on the iTunes app store: Tower Defense games and Web-Based MMO's.
I've played a fair few Tower Defense games and I didn't like it a whole lot. I admit, the ones that are more like "You defend this tower with your finger power" are okay, but really the app store is flooded with them.
And what's with the Web-Based MMO's? Why can't you just go to Facebook and play them? Do they really deserve their own dedicated app? You could make something more interesting yourself. I'd rather play a choose-your-own-adventure with mild RPG elements than click on a quest a few times then wait a while for you to regain energy to do more quests. There's hardly any gameplay in them, but my main gripe is that there's just so many of them, and I'm willing to bet they all play the same.

There are a lot of apps filed under "lifestyle" that are essentially a collection of pictures that you can save to your ipod, and they're always expensive. Really? Do they expect someone to pay $4 for some pictures you stole off DeviantArt and I could find with google image search? For FREE?

The app store game genres are really innacurate. Cheat guides for console games are listed AS games. Web-Based MMO's are listed multiple times, with pay-versions coming with something trivial. Slide To Play's genre classification also has problems. "Unarmed Combat"? Couldn't you just say "2D Fighting Games"? Punch-Out ripoffs should get their own genre.

$8 for Sonic The Hedgehog? Sure its a timeless classic, but $8? Isn't that a bit much? And no, the controls are fine and the lack of a continue option is somewhat offest by a level select cheat.
WWE SvR 2010 was an impulse buy. It may be the same as the java mobile game in many ways, but its still good. No CM Punk? Aww...

And don't EVER buy an iTunes gift card, always get them printed ON the receipt.



Finally, there's this one app, iAllosaur, I... don't really understand it. Its kinda an educational virtual pet where you have extremely limited interaction with the pet and... I just don't get it.