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Almost exactly as I finally finished the last major feat of the previous batch of StreetPass Mii Plaza games (catching the last fish of the last fishing hole), Nintendo had to go and release five more! Ah, well. I thought now would be a good time to take a look back at those two games and the VIP features.
First off, I've been a big fan of the StreetPass games in general, and the first set of four paid DLC games had a good amount of variety, with some slower, more deliberate games and some faster, more mindless ones. These two newer ones are fairly complementary as well, with the zombie game falling into the former category and the fishing game falling into the latter.
The fishing game, Ultimate Angler, has a similar feel as the haunted manor game (not surprising since they were both developed by Prope), and here the shirt color of the Miis you pass provide you with a range of types of bait that you combine to try to attract fish you catch at various fishing locations. Miis from different regions open up three special islands, and Miis from different countries let you visit another exclusive location. The game is pretty mindless, but it is fun to work your way through all the fishing locations and catch all the fish. The "boss" and other special fish often take several times through to wear down their stamina enough to catch them, but otherwise things move along pretty steadily. I still have a few fish to catch, including some special ones that are only "spotted" when you StreetPass someone who also has the fishing game, but one of the last challenges is to get the largest size fish of every breed (they're ranked from A+ to E), which seems extremely pointless.
The zombie game, Battleground Z, is extremely similar to Mii Force, the shoot 'em up, which also shouldn't be surprising since they were both developed by Good-Feel. Instead of shirt color as with Mii Force, here the Miis' hobbies determine their weapon types. Battleground Z is a fairly typical beat 'em up, and for the majority of the main mode things progress pretty steadily.The problem, though, and it's a significant one, is that collecting all the medals (four possible for each stage), gets to be a big drag. There are time challenges, etc., but the main problem is the "find rare zombies" challenges, which require you use a specific weapon (usually its special attack, which is limited) in a particular unspecified place in the stage. I've replayed some stages dozens of times with no luck finding the rare zombie, and I'm close to having to resort to using a FAQ. Ugh!
The VIP features are pretty pointless, but completist that I am I bought them anyway. The new speech bubbles for your Mii greetings are fun, although a lot of the new hats are just costume versions of previous hats (i.e. include clothes as well as a hat). The birthday collection feature is a quick and completely passive addition, and I'm only now just getting to the point where I'm getting close to filling in each month of the calendar. It's fluffy, but for an OCD, completist type like me it's not a bad addition. Basically if you got a kick out of slowly filling in the map of your region with Miis, you'll probably like the birthday feature as it's basically the same thing.
It's hard to believe that StreetPass Mii is my second-highest played 3DS game and that I've clocked 200 (!!!) hours. I'm glad that I was able to make all that progress without having to resort to any cheats whatsoever, although I'm still waiting for my final US state StreetPass (Arkansas, in case anyone's curious). The amount of StreetPasses I've gotten in the wild seems to have slowed, but it's nice to have a use for Play Coins, and I still carry my 3DS everywhere and get psyched whenever I see that little green StreetPass light. I've started to dip into the next batch of games, and although I may finally be nearing StreetPass fatigue, I don't doubt that the total hours I spend playing these games will keep increasing for a good while yet.
Pass along these StreetPass Mii Plaza Games links:
- Official site
- Info on the features added in that update on nintendo.wikia.com, which also includes pages on each game
- Long analysis of the novelty of the StreetPass games by Totilo at Kotaku